Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that \u200bNATO allies must lift defence-industry restrictions among them, pressing the \u200ccase for Ankara to break into some Europe-only initiatives, Reuters reports.<\/p>\n
“Restrictions among allies on defence cooperation, especially in the defence industry, must be lifted,” Erdogan \u200btold the opening of a summit of NATO \u200bleaders in Ankara.<\/p>\n
“At a time when a model of \u2060cooperation based on common sense and reason is possible, \u200bexcluding allies that are not members of the (European) Union would \u200blead to artificial divisions in Europe.”<\/p>\n
On Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump, sitting alongside Erdogan, said\u00a0he would lift\u00a0sanctions off Turkey and make a \u200bdecision on a potential sale of F-35s to it. \u200bBoth decisions are likely to face resistance from Congress.<\/p>\n
Turkey has NATO’s second-largest \u200carmy \u2060and has emerged as a big developer and exporter of arms. Though Ankara has repeatedly said it wants to join European security initiatives like the SAFE funding scheme, so far \u200bit has \u200bbeen kept at \u2060arm’s length due to political and policy differences.<\/p>\n
Erdogan said Turkey was on track to reach \u200bNATO’s 5% defence spending target by the \u200bcountry’s 2030 \u2060goal, and that it has allocated a $24-billion additional budget for its “Steel Dome” air defence project to boost NATO’s air and \u2060missile \u200bdefences.<\/p>\n
He added that allies must take \u200bmore responsibility in bloc defence without hindering alliance unity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that \u200bNATO allies must lift defence-industry restrictions among them, pressing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16467],"tags":[1205,1243,1262,1201,1202,1203,1208,1227,1225,1217,1250,1254,1248,1233,1216,1251,1213,1234,1232,1219,1255,1222,1221,1249,1230,1244,1264,1267,1265,1261,1223,1259,1207,1214,1220,1209,1245,1241,1247,1266,1210,1235,1236,1226,1206,1237,1215,1268,369,1231,1242,1263,1229,1253,1228,1257,1256,7098,1269,1240,1238,1258,1224,1246,1212,1260,1218,1252,1211,1239,1204],"class_list":["post-144162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-all-news","tag-amsterdam-news","tag-ankara-news","tag-apa-az","tag-apa-news","tag-apa-az-news","tag-apaaz-news","tag-austria-news","tag-belgium-news","tag-brexit-news","tag-buckingham-palace","tag-bundestag-news","tag-catalonia-news","tag-council-of-europe-news","tag-eastern-european-countries-news","tag-elysee-palace","tag-european-countries-news","tag-european-court-of-human-rights-echr-news","tag-european-union-news","tag-france-news","tag-france-senate","tag-frg-news","tag-germany-news","tag-great-britain-queen","tag-greece-news","tag-hague-court","tag-iaea-news","tag-illegal-migrants","tag-international-atomic-energy-agency","tag-istanbul-news","tag-italy-news","tag-karabakh","tag-latest-news","tag-latest-news-from-european-countries","tag-latest-news-from-france","tag-lent-az-news","tag-lisbon-news","tag-london-news","tag-madrid-news","tag-migration-news","tag-most-read-news","tag-nato-news","tag-nato-secretary-general","tag-netherlands-news","tag-news-baku","tag-news-from-brussels","tag-news-from-western-european-countries","tag-news-of-illegal-migration-to-europe","tag-news-today","tag-osce-news","tag-paris-news","tag-pkk-news","tag-poland-news","tag-pope","tag-portugal-news","tag-pro-armenian-france","tag-pro-armenian-senators","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-repatriation-news-from-european-countries","tag-rome-news","tag-scandinavian-countries","tag-so-called-armenian-genocide","tag-spain-news","tag-strasbourg-news","tag-todays-news","tag-turkey-news","tag-uk-news","tag-vatican","tag-vesti-az-news","tag-vienna-news","tag-xeber-az"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}