Leader of NATO Turkey: Giving Ukraine Tanks ‘High Risk’ and Lines the Pockets of Arms Makers

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sakarya
Turkish Presidency / Murat Cetinmuhurdar / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Jack Montgomery

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the strongman leader of NATO member Turkey, has expressed misgivings about sending Ukraine advanced weapons such as tanks, and suggested it is about filling the arms industry’s pockets.

“Certain countries have been sending tanks and weapons to the Ukraine — is this the solution [to the conflict]?” the Turkish leader asked in comments translated by government-owned broadcaster TRT World, referring to initiatives first by the British government and then by the Joe Biden administration and a group of Western governments with German-made Leopard 2 tanks to bolster the Ukrainian military with Western armour.

“Only time will tell, I personally think that only time will tell… I personally cannot say that sending tanks would fix this issue,” Erdogan said.

“These are high-risk endeavours — and also, these line the pockets of weapons producers,” he alleged, appearing to imply that the motivations of some actors who favour sending more advanced weapons to the Ukrainians may not be entirely altruistic.

Turkey is one of a number of countries traditionally viewed as being aligned with the West, including India and Israel, which have adopted a somewhat ambivalent stance towards Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, taking little or no part in the Western sanctions war with Russia and even exploiting it to strengthen their own economic position.

Indeed, Erdogan struck a deal with Vladimir Putin in late 2022 which should see Turkey become a hub for Russian gas, and likely profit as a kind of middleman between Russia and its old customers in the European Union.

Turkey is also blocking the admission of EU member-states Finland and especially Sweden from NATO, demanding that the Scandinavian countries extradite a number of persons wanted by his regime and that they outlaw protests in which the Islamic Qur’an is disrespected.

Turkey’s own foreign policy is far from pacifistic, with Erdogan executing a number of strikes against, and even incursions into Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq, despite the targeted forces often being viewed as allies of the West against entities such as the Islamic State.

The Muslim-majority country also habitually makes threats against and violates the airspace and territorial waters of Greece, an EU member-state and fellow NATO member, and maintains a widely unrecognised puppet state in the north of EU member Cyprus, which it has been occupying and colonising since an invasion in the 1970s.

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