Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu proposed to set up a NATO working group to make Russia’s S-400 air defense system compatible with NATO.
"The claim is that the S400 and F-35s are incompatible. That’s the claim. Here is our proposal, let’s have a working group and NATO can chair this and let’s let experts make the assessment and come back to us," he said during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"We believe the S400 and F-35 are compatible," Reuters cited Cavusoglu as saying.
"It does not pose any threats to the NATO system or to NATO allies," he added.
Military observer of the TASS news agency Viktor Litovkin, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, said that it's not that hard to make S-400 compatible with NATO.
He cited Greece as an example of successful integration, which is a member of the alliance armed with the Soviet and Russian systems Igla, Buk, Tor, and S-300.
"This is Russia-made weapon, but there were no problems with making it compatible with NATO. When we talk about the Turkish S-400, it’s just a factor of competition. The Americans said that the S-400 is incompatible with NATO systems because that they didn’t want to allow Russian military equipment to enter the NATO market," he stressed.
He noted that Cavusoglu's statement is not aimed at actually creating a mechanism for making Russian systems compatible with NATO, but is part of the recent political game between Ankara and Washington.
