86123 - Transcription: Turkey’s Euro fighter dirty game

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Athina Kehagias

During this period, a dirty game is taking place as far as the aircrafts that Turkey wants to obtain are concerned. Why? Because while the F-35 program is frozen and we see that the Americans are behaving all the better and more effectively against Turkey, there are moves on the part of Turkey to approach what? The Euro fighters, and this is specifically happening with Spain and England, who want to convince Germany, so that Turkey buys 40 Euro fighters. Why is it important for us to understand this? First of all, Turkey presents it in her very own way, it says, we are not making an effort, but it is the others who are trying to convince Germany and it is very important that we also understand, because now we see it from Germany’s side as well, that the Greek-German lobby has a role to play upon this matter. Because we can’t on the one hand rejoice because America finally sees Turkey clearly, and on the other hand within the European Union to say that it would be good to sell Euro fighters to Turkey, because in any case it’s just a tail. Things are not so simple and the behavior of Turkey especially in this period, especially with the Ukrainian issue and with what is happening in Israel, it is highly unacceptable to take a position in such negotiations in such a manner. Consequently, it is certainly presented by Turkey as an issue, which is important but it’s played upon by the Europeans themselves, because of course the Minister of Defense presented all these issues to the budget committee, but we have to understand as well that it is a way to influence the situation and if we are not careful and if we do not see what Turkey wants in the depth of time, then we can make mistakes and then we will be saying why we did them. Therefore I repeat, we stopped the F-35 issue, we are still playing with the F-16 and now a new matter is emerging with the Euro fighters and so we ought to approach it in a more strategic, more efficient way in order for it to work to our benefit at the end of the day.