Pompeo Criticizes Turkey for S-400 during NATO Meeting

Mike Pompeo, the United States Secretary of State strongly criticized Turkey for buying the Russian S-400 missiles during the latest NATO meeting held on Tuesday, December 1st.

Some diplomats and authorities who chose to keep their names confidential announced that Pompeo said during the virtual meeting that Turkey is compromising the NATO’s safety as well as the Eastern Mediterranean’s stability with its oil conflicts with Greece and Cyprus.

Pompeo’s words caused other members including France, Greece, and Luxembourg to also criticize Turkey. The diplomats announced that despite the fact that Pompeo tone was “calculated”, it was more violent than what is expected in such meetings.

One of the authorities mentioned that the United States advised Turkey to solve the S-400 issue, stop using Syrian fighters in its external conflicts, and stop its Eastern Mediterranean provocative actions.

According to “Reuters”, some Turkish sources announced that Pompeo accused Turkey falsely and that there was not a united front against Turkey. Also, Turkey started preparing for negotiations with Greece without any preconditions.

The Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu stated today, Thursday, December 3rd regarding the Ankara and Washington conflict that he can not comment on a confidential meeting.

Çavuşoğlu added publicly, “I just explained the conflict between the two countries and the pending cases… We had to buy the “S-400” from Russia because we could not buy it from our allies.”