The saga of Turkey’s quest for a ground-based long-range air and missile defense system (LORAMIDS) took a new turn last month when, within two weeks, defense minister Fikri Isik announced deals with both Russia and the Eurosam consortium. Turkey has been wanting to acquire such a system for many years, and in 2013 it initially accepted an offer from China that was worth a reported $3.4 billion. But the deal was never sealed after objections from the leadership of NATO, of which Turkey is a key member (although an increasingly unreliable one).

Turkey subsequently explored the development of an indigenous system by defense electronics company Aselsan and weapons maker Roketsan, or buying the medium extended air defense system (MEADS) that is being co-developed by Lockheed Martin and MBDA for Germany. It also considered the Lockheed Martin/Raytheon Patriot system. But Turkey also re-opened negotiations with Russia for the S-400 system that had previously stalled because of high cost, according to unofficial reports. Again there were objections from Turkey’s Western defense partners, which made clear that if Turkey acquired the S-400 system, it would have to be operated stand-alone, with no integration with U.S. or NATO air defense systems deployed in the country.

On July 4 this year, Isik told Turkish media that the country had reached a technical agreement to acquire four S-400 systems from Russia. The first two would be delivered from Russia and the final two would be produced in-country by Aselsan and Roketsan. The deal was unofficially reported to be worth $2.5 billion, although Isik said that “we continue work on the financial aspects. I think we will bring this to a close in the coming days."

But on July 14, Isik announced that Turkey had signed an agreement with the Franco-Italian Eurosam joint venture between MBDA and Thales to jointly produce the SAMP/T Aster 30 system. Eurosam said that it had agreed with Aselsan and Roketsan to conduct a definition study for what it described as an “in-depth cooperation.”

Eurosam continued: “The future Turkish air and missile system will be based on the technologies and experience that Eurosam has built in ground and naval systems using the Aster missile over 25 years and €11 billion [$12.9 billion] of collective investment. These systems have been delivered to the current home nations of France and Italy, many export nations, and are able to defeat the most challenging of air threats, whether air-breathing or ballistic. The future program will be managed in synergy with future evolutions of the Eurosam systems in France and Italy.

Michel Vigneras, the chief executive officer of Eurosam, noted, “The Italian Army has deployed two Eurosam-built SAMP/T firing units since June 2016 as part of NATO’s contribution to the defence of Turkey.” Other NATO members have deployed Patriot missile batteries in Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said publicly last month that the U.S. “had not helped Turkey one bit” in meeting its LORAMIDS requirement, which he said is urgently needed. The U.S. is known to have placed restrictions on the deployment to some of Turkey’s borders of any air defense missile system with U.S. content.