Turkey Defends Choice of Chinese Missiles

Turkey on Wednesday defended its decision to enter talks with China to acquire its first long-range anti-missile system, in spite of protests from its ally Washington.
It also made clear that no deal had yet been finalised.
In an official statement last week, Turkey said it has "decided to begin talks with the CPMIEC company of the People's Republic of China for the joint production of the systems and its missiles in Turkey".
China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp (CPMIEC) beat out competition from a US partnership of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, Russia's Rosoboronexport, and the Italian-French consortium Eurosamrs in the tender.
The United States reacted with alarm to news that Ankara had chosen the Chinese firm, slapped with US sanctions for delivering arms to Iran and Syria, to build the air defence and anti-missile system.
Turkey wants to build its own long-range air defence and anti-missile architecture to counter both enemy aircraft and missiles.
NATO has also raised concerns over possible compatibility issues between the Chinese-made system and others used within the alliance.
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