Turkey bought Russian S-400 missiles designed to down NATO planes. For the US, that's a problem - CNN

But the deal, worth about $2 billion and consummated this week, has consequences far beyond the cost to Ankara's defense budget.

It calls into question the decades-long strategic relationship between Turkey and the US, and even Turkey's credentials as a NATO member. It probably nullifies a massive contract for Turkey to buy US F-35 combat aircraft -- a plane the S-400 is designed to shoot down.

The deal also solidifies a deepening relationship between Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin -- two leaders with little time for dissent at home and who need each other in Syria. And it provides the Turkish armed forces with an advanced weapon capable of covering most of Syria and their old adversary Greece (also a NATO member.)

The S-400 can shoot down aircraft at a distance of up to 150 miles (240 km) and intercept ballistic missiles up to 38 miles away.

In essence it is a destabilizing purchase in a region that could do without any more destabilizing. It is also an assertion by Turkey of its independence as a major regional power.

Tension between Turkey and US

Erdogan and the United States have been at odds for years. The Turkish President said the US had protected Fethullah Gulen, the cleric (and Pennsylvania resident) he blames for an attempted coup in 2016. Erdogan declared: "The coup plotter is in your country. You are nurturing him there. It's out in the open."

He has demanded Gulen's extradition countless times, but there's no sign US authorities will accede.

Erdogan and other senior members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have often played to anti-American sentiment among the party's conservative, nationalist base.

Erdogan was also infuriated by the US alliance with the Kurdish militia in Syria -- the YPG -- in the campaign to defeat ISIS. Turkey regards the YPG as a terrorist group affiliated with the PKK, which has fought the Turkish state for more than three decades.

When the US considered training a mainly Kurdish contingent to guard the Turkish border last year, Erdogan tweeted: "The US has now acknowledged that it has established a terror army along our borders."

The tension persists. The two sides can't agree on the establishment of a safe zone for refugees inside northern Syria. And this week, CNN reported that US military intelligence is observing a buildup of Turkish armored units that may be planning cross-border combat operations -- amid growing concerns that US troops operating in northern Syria will be caught in the middle.

"There are some indications" that Turkey is preparing for an "incursion" into Syria, but the intelligence is not yet definitive, one official said.

For its part Washington has been exasperated by prison sentences handed to US citizens in Turkey (Pastor Andrew Brunson being the most prominent example) and Turkish staff working at the US Embassy -- seeing them as politically motivated. The Trump administration retaliated by imposing sanctions on senior Turkish ministers.

There was also tension over the Saudi response to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- and over what was perceived as an ambivalent approach in Ankara to confronting ISIS, especially in 2015-16. Sporadic threats by Turkey to close the US airbase at Incirlik have been another irritant.

But all these difficulties pale in comparison to the fallout from the S-400 deal. Even before the first deliveries, the US warned that Turkey would be suspended from the F-35 combat jet program and stopped training its pilots.

Erdogan has said that excluding Turkey from the F-35 program would be "robbery," since Ankara has already invested more than $1 billion in the consortium building it. Altogether it planned to buy 116 planes.

The US also threatened new sanctions should Turkey complete the S-400 contract, prompting Erdogan to claim on the sidelines of the G-20 summit: "It is out of question between two strategic partners. I think it should not happen."

US President Donald Trump has suggested the sanctions could be diluted, but many in Congress are determined Turkey should be penalized. According to a US federal law (the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act), the administration must levy at least five different penalties against Turkey. Just how punitive they will be is yet to be seen.

NATO is also concerned that the S-400 deal will affect Turkey's ability to cooperate with other alliance members. "Interoperability of our armed forces is fundamental to NATO for the conduct of our operations and missions," said one official.

Putin stirs up trouble

Russia is of course delighted that it has not only sold its S-400 to a member of NATO but helped drive a deeper wedge between Turkey and the US. The Turkish purchase is also a great shop window for the Russian defense industry. India is expected to be the next customer for the S-400.

And then there's Syria. President Vladimir Putin seduced Turkey into joining the "Astana" process with Russia and Iran on the future of Syria, essentially sidelining the United Nations and the US. Now, Erdogan needs Russian support to prevent an offensive by the Assad regime against the rebel-held province of Idlib, where Turkey has peacekeeping troops but also backs several rebel factions.

If Turkey wants to have any sway on the future shape of Syria, it has to engage with Russia. Buying the S-400 helped cement a necessary if not necessarily warm relationship.

Above all, the arrival of the first batch of S-400 equipment in Ankara on Friday is the most dramatic instance of a trend that stretches back to the Arab Spring. Erdogan, already in power for more than 15 years, wants to fashion Turkey as an independent and influential power in the region, no longer beholden to the United States and no longer in need of the American nuclear umbrella that protected it for decades.

Holding out an olive branch Friday, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkey was still considering buying US Patriot missiles "to cover our need for a long-range air and missile defense system." He also said the purchase of the S-400 "does not in any way mean a change of [Turkey's] strategic orientation."

But the course of Turkey's strategy seems set.

As Aaron Stein puts it in Foreign Affairs, Erdogan and the AKP "don't think their relationship with Washington is nearly as valuable as Washington seems to think it is."

Taking up the thread, Steven A. Cook, a longtime Turkey watcher, says Ankara "is not the partner it used to be. In the future, U.S. policy should be based on the fact that while Turkey is not an enemy of the United States, it is also not a friend."

And you don't share your best jets with countries that are not your friends.

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2019-07-13 12:11:00Z
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Death toll in Somalia hotel attack rises to 26 - CNN

Colonel Salah Osman, a police officer who was part of the rescue operation on Friday night, told CNN that the attack began when a car bomb exploded in a suicide blast at the gate of the Asasey, a heavily fortified hotel 500 km south of the capital Mogadishu. An assault team of four attackers then entered the premises and battled with Jubaland's security forces for 12 hours.

The attackers were shot dead during the fighting inside the hotel, Osman said, while the car bomber died when the explosives were detonated.

Among the dead were three Kenyans, three Tanzanians, two Americans, one Canadian and one Briton, Madobe said.

Hodan Nalayeh, a prominent Somali-Canadian journalist and YouTube star, was critically wounded during the attack and later died in hospital, police captain Mahad Abdia told CNN. Her husband Farid was also killed.

Another journalist, Mohamed Sahal Omar, who worked for the Puntland-based Somali Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), was shot dead while attempting to photograph the attackers inside the hotel, according to a statement by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).

A candidate for the regional presidency, tribal elders, and journalists were also killed, Mahad Abdia said. The attack occurred as local officials met inside the hotel ahead of a regional election in August. Dozens were rescued, he added.

Speaking to CNN Saturday morning, a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office did not confirm a British citizen was among the victims. "We are in touch with local Somali authorities and seeking more information following an explosion in Kismayo," the spokesperson said.

Terror group Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published on an affiliated website, saying it targeted Jubaland state ministers, regional and federal lawmakers, as well as candidates in the hotel. CNN has not been able to independently confirm these claims.

Radina Gigova contributed to this report.

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2019-07-13 11:04:00Z
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Syria's Assad says talks on post-war constitution to 'continue' - Aljazeera.com

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has said discussions would "continue" over the composition of a body to draw up a post-war constitution for the country.

Meeting with Russian envoy Alexander Lavrentiev, Assad discussed ongoing efforts towards "creating a committee to discuss the constitution", the presidency said on Friday.

The president and Moscow's representative "agreed to continue working and intensely coordinate between both sides on the next steps," it said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the Syrian government and visiting United Nations Envoy Geir Pedersen announced "progress" towards forming the body, whose composition has dragged for more than 17 months.

Disagreements have raged over the names to be included in the committee, a third of which are to be nominated by the government, another by the opposition, and a final third by the UN envoy.

Damascus hopes to amend the current constitution, while the opposition wants to write a new one from scratch.

The UN envoy met the Syrian Negotiation Commission opposition grouping late Thursday "to discuss the results of Pedersen's latest visit to Damascus", it said on Twitter, without further details.

Pro-government newspaper al-Watan on Tuesday reported that a body could start work as early as September if Damascus agreed to Pedersen's list.

Last month, the United States said it was time to scrap the constitutional committee initiative and come up with other ways to end the war.

Numerous rounds of UN-led peace talks have failed to end a conflict that has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.

In recent years, a parallel negotiations track led by regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey has taken precedence.

With key military backing from Russia, government forces have retaken large parts of Syria from rebel groups since 2015, and now control around 60 percent of the country.

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2019-07-13 09:28:00Z
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Somalia attack results in deaths and injuries, reports say; Americans said to be among casualties - Fox News

As many as 26 people, including an unknown number of Americans, died during a more than 14-hour-long siege on a Somali hotel carried out by gunmen with ties to the global Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, according to a report, and dozens more were reported injured.

Among those killed was a presidential candidate running in upcoming regional elections, current Jubbaland president Ahmed Mohamed said in a statement to Reuters.

Canadian journalist Hodan Nalayeh and her husband, Farid Jama Suleiman, also were among those killed, Mogadishu-based independent radio station Radio Dalsan confirmed to the Associated Press. She was the first Somali woman media owner in the world.

8 KILLED, 16 HURT AS EXPLOSIONS ROCK SOMALIA'S CAPITAL

"I'm absolutely devastated by the news of the death of our dear sister Hodan Nalayeh and her husband in a terrorist attack in Somalia today. What a loss to us. Her beautiful spirit shined through her work and the way she treated people," Omar Suleiman, a Texas-based imam who knew the victim, wrote on social media.

Nalayeh was born in Somalia in 1976, but spent most of her life in Canada, first in Alberta and then in Toronto. She founded Integration TV, an international web-based video production company aimed at Somali viewers around the world.

Attackers first deployed a suicide bomb at the entrance gate to the Asasey Hotel in Somalia’s port city of Kismayo on Friday evening. At least four gunmen then stormed the hotel, which is frequented by politicians, patrons and lawmakers.

At least 14 hours passed before Somali troops shot dead all four attackers inside the hotel compound, Col. Abdiqadir Nur, a local police officer, told the Associated Press.

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Reports on the death toll were conflicting. Initial reports said 12 people died in the attack. The president of Somalia’s Jubbaland region told Reuters on Saturday the death toll had risen to 26 people, including Americans, a Briton, Kenyans and Tanzanians.

The number of injured ranged from 40 to 56, according to reports.

Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the attack. Al-Shabab, which is allied with al-Qaeda, often uses car bombs to infiltrate heavily fortified targets like the hotel in Kismayo, which has been relatively quiet in recent years.

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2019-07-13 09:21:16Z
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Russia delivers more air defense equipment to Turkey - Reuters

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Russia flew a fresh shipment of advanced air defense equipment to Turkey on Saturday, the Turkish Defence Ministry said, continuing to implement a deal that is likely to trigger U.S. sanctions against a NATO ally.

FILE PHOTO: First parts of a Russian S-400 missile defense system are seen after unloaded from a Russian plane at Murted Airport, known as Akinci Air Base, near Ankara, Turkey, July 12, 2019. Turkish Military/Turkish Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

The ministry said a fourth Russian cargo plane landed at the Murted air base near the Turkish capital Ankara, a day after three huge Russian air force AN-124 planes offloaded equipment at the base.

Washington has tried for months to prevent the deal, arguing that the Russian S-400 air defense system is incompatible with NATO systems. It also says that if the S-400s are deployed near U.S. F-35 jets, which Turkey is buying and helping to produce, they would undermine the stealth fighter planes’ defenses.

U.S. officials had warned that Turkey would be thrown off the F-35 program if it took delivery of the S-400s, and would also face sanctions under U.S. legislation seeking to prevent countries from buying military equipment from Russia.

Turkey says S-400 is a strategic defense requirement, above all to secure its southern borders with Syria and Iraq. It says that when it made the deal with Russia for the S-400s, the United States and Europe had not presented a viable alternative.

The dispute between the countries with the two largest armies in NATO marks a deep division in the Western military alliance, which was forged after World War Two to counter Moscow’s military power.

Reaction from Washington was limited on Friday, with acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper saying the U.S. stance had not changed. Esper later spoke with Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar.

“Minister Akar told his U.S. counterpart that Turkey remains under a serious air and missile threat and that purchase of S-400 defense systems was not an option but rather a necessity,” a Turkish Defence Ministry statement said.

Investors in Turkey have been unsettled by the deal and the prospect of sanctions, a year after a dispute with Washington over the trial of a U.S. pastor in Turkey contributed to a financial crisis which drove Turkey’s economy into recession.

The Turkish lira weakened as much as 1.6% to 5.7780 against the dollar on Friday, before recovering somewhat.

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted an unnamed military-diplomatic source on Friday as saying that a further delivery – of 120 guided missiles – would be carried out by ship at the end of the summer.

Reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Mark Heinrich

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-07-13 08:15:00Z
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Why Was an American Scientist Murdered in a Nazi Bunker? - The Daily Beast

Suzanne Eaton was, by every standard, an accomplished woman. The 59-year-old molecular biologist from Oakland, California, held a black belt in Taekwondo and was a globetrotting speaker on the international science circuit. She was married to a British scientist with whom she had two children, and she was an avid runner, racking up several miles on her daily 30-minute run.

Eaton, who worked as a research leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, was last seen playing piano at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, in Kolymbari, on July 2, where she was attending a conference. 

Her family and friends assumed that she had gone for a run and perhaps passed out in the stifling heat wave or fallen on rough terrain during her workout. Her passport, money, phone, cycling shoes and laptop were all found in her hotel room, they say. All that was missing were her running shoes. 

Her relatives and friends raised nearly $50,000 to aid the search through an online campaign. Then, on July 9, her body was found by two local residents exploring a World War II era Nazi bunker about seven miles from where Eaton had been staying. 

Her body, which was wrapped in burlap, showed signs of torture, including stab wounds, but her official cause of death, according to the coroner was asphyxiation. The coroner said she likely suffered a “slow and painful death.”

There was no immediate sign of sexual violence, according to investigators,  who said she was still dressed when she was found. A full autopsy is under way. Her body was in such an advanced state of decomposition after a week in the extreme heat that dental records had to be used for a positive identification. 

On Friday, Crete’s police spokesperson Eleni Papathanasiou confirmed to The Daily Beast that they were questioning several suspects, including some with neo-Nazi ties, who may know something about what happened to Eaton. 

Papathanasiou also said they were looking into whether the location of her body inside a labyrinth of tunnels dug out by Nazis occupying Crete during World War II was connected to the murder. “It is of course part of the investigation,” Papathanasiou told The Daily Beast. “It is a curious place to leave a body, especially when the victim was living and working in Germany.”

Police are also taking into consideration how a woman as fit as Eaton who held a black belt in Taekwondo could be overcome. “The perpetrator or perpetrators may have suffered defensive wounds, and we are looking at that as well.”

Crete has long been a magnet for neo-Nazi sympathizers who regularly treasure hunt in bunkers like the one where Eaton was found, searching for World War II relics. Several collectors have unofficial museums in small villages where their Nazi regalia is on display. 

Crete was also a recent base for several leaders of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party who had chosen the Greek island for its historical ties to Nazi occupation. In 2018, an anti-Fascist group was able to raid the Golden Dawn headquarters in the capital Heraklion, which sent the group underground.  

Konstantinos Beblidakis, the vice mayor of the local Platanias municipality, said the area where Eaton was found was accessible by various backroads but there were no surveillance cameras despite the fact that the area above the bunkers was a popular hiking area for tourists. 

He said that most people, except those who are well versed in the island’s Nazi past, would not have known about the bunker, which was not open to the public or marked in any way. It is yet unclear how the two local residents found her or just why they were inside the secret bunker. 

Eaton’s university-age son, Max, praised his mother in a statement. “She managed to live a life with few regrets, balancing out her personal life with her career,” he said. “I think the fact that I did not realize how well she had managed to do so was evident [by the fact] that other mothers around me had taken to caring for their children full time, yet mine was never outdone by any of them.”

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2019-07-12 16:25:00Z
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Beijing to impose sanctions on U.S. firms involved in $2.2B Taiwan arms deal - POLITICO

The U.S. arms deal with Taiwan includes 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

This story is being published as part of a content partnership with the South China Morning Post. It originally appeared on scmp.com on July 12, 2019.

Beijing said on Friday it will issue sanctions against the U.S. companies involved in the latest arms sale to Taiwan, as tensions between China and the United States continue to rise.

Story Continued Below

The foreign ministry said in a brief statement that the move by Washington had violated China’s territorial sovereignty and national security.

“To protect our national interest, China will impose sanctions on the U.S. companies involved in the arms sale,” ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang was quoted as saying.

Beijing has made repeated calls to the U.S. for it to stop engaging in military exchanges with Taiwan, with the latest remarks coming after Washington on Monday approved the sale of U.S. $2.2 billion worth of military equipment to the self-ruled island.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on a visit to Budapest on Friday that the U.S. should stop “playing with fire”.
“We urge the U.S. to fully recognize the gravity of the Taiwan question … [and] not to play with fire on the question of Taiwan,” he told a news conference.

The deal will do little to ease the tension between China and the U.S., which are embroiled in multiple disputes on a range of issues, from trade and technology to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea.

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Beijing last used the threat of sanctions to punish U.S. firms in 2015, after Washington approved a U.S. $1.83 billion arms deal with Taiwan, saying that its determination to protect its territorial integrity was unshakeable.

The latest deal includes 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, 250 Stinger missiles and related equipment.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which handles U.S. foreign arms sales, said the principal missile contractor would be Raytheon Missile Systems, and the prime contractor for the tanks would be General Dynamics Land Systems.

The deal is by far the most substantial since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. Previous sales, announced in June 2017, September 2018 and April 2019, included training and maintenance/logistics support, as well as torpedoes, anti-radiation missiles and missile components. They were worth U.S. $500 million, U.S. $330 million and U.S. $1.42 billion respectively.

Beijing’s sanctions announcement came after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen made a public appearance in New York on Thursday during a stopover en route to the Caribbean nations of Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Lucia.

At a reception at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office — the first of its kind ever hosted by a Taiwanese president — Tsai said the self-ruled island would not bend to pressure from Beijing to give up its ambition of joining the United Nations.

Her remarks were criticized by the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, whose spokesperson, Ma Xiaoguang, accused her of using external powers to challenge the “one China” principle and threaten the stability of the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing considers Taiwan a wayward province awaiting reunification with the mainland fold, by force if necessary. It has become increasingly upset by American arms and strategic support for the island in countering Beijing’s military expansion since Trump became president.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/12/beijing-sanctions-taiwan-arms-deal-1589348

2019-07-12 16:01:00Z
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