Moscow: Possible deployment of the elements of NATO missile defense shield in Turkey is targeted against Iran and may pose a threat to Russia’s security, Russian experts said on Saturday.
Earlier on Saturday Turkish media said Ankara would agree to deploy a missile-defense system on its territory if its three conditions were accepted.
First, the Turkish authorities insist on building NATO, but not the U.S. missile defense system. Second, the anti-missile shield should be deployed in the all alliance’s states-members. And third, Turkey would not allow NATO to turn it into the alliance’s frontline state as it was during the Cold War.
“Turkey wants to be equally respected both in the West and in the East…Turkey wants to entrench itself as a key empire of the entire continent,” Sergei Demidenko of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis said.
“Geographically Turkey is the closest to Iran, while politically it is one of Iran’s enemies,” another Russian leading political expert, the head of the Institute of Political Studies, Sergei Markov said. “It is Iran’s enemy because Turkey is the ally of the United States…but first of all they both [Turkey and Iran] compete for the leadership in the Islamic world.”
The President of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs, Leonid Ivashov said the ongoing deployment of the anti-missile defense shield in Europe is aimed to “neutralize Russia’s nuclear missile potential.”
“We do not have other powers, except of the nuclear missile potential, to protect even the single parts of our territories,” Ivashov said.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, while commenting on Turkey’s plans to deploy anti-missile shield said that NATO should exclude any formula that confronts Turkey with a group of countries in its threat definitions and planning.
“We do not want a Cold War zone or psychology around us,” Davutoglu added.
Turkey’s decision over missile defense system on its soil will be announced at the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon due to be held on November 18-19.
