Military says it will buy fewer missiles than reported

“The price of the missile system has been put at $7.8 billion, but the real price is $1 billion, and this has a payback period of six years,” Major General Ferit Güler, head of the General Staff's communication department, told reporters. The sale to Turkey would include 13 Patriot “fire units,” 72 PAC-3 missiles and a range of associated hardware for ground-based air defense, the Pentagon announced last week.

Yet, Güler said Turkey is only planning to buy four anti-missile batteries, thus the price would not be $7.8 billion as reported.

“As claimed, these missiles are not against a certain country. They are mobile and can be used on every front. From wherever an air force and missile threat comes, these defense missiles will be moved to that particular region for deterrence and defense,” Güler also said.

Whether Turkey will buy the US-made Patriots or other systems is also not yet clear. On Monday, the Secretariat-General of the Defense Ministry announced that the US offer was still under consideration as part of an ongoing international tender to acquire long-range air and missile-defense systems. The China National Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation (CPMIEC) and Russia's Rosoboronexport are also in the tender.

‘Not for deterrence’

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Friday that the possible missile sale to Turkey was not in response to a threat from neighbors but part of a drive to modernize the country's armed forces. Turkey has good relations with Iran, a country the United States sees as a possible threat. Turkey also shares land borders with Georgia, Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq and Syria.

“We see zero threats from our neighbors; this is more of an internal issue of the military,” Davutoğlu said in an interview broadcast live on the CNN Türk news channel on Friday. “There is no current threat. There is also no threat perception [by Turkey] either,” he added.

The purchase of Patriot missiles was not planned earlier, and it is something new, Davutoğlu also told reporters on Thursday. “We don't assume any threats from our neighboring countries. This is clear. This is much more about a comprehensive approach to security and not because of any particular threat.”

This week Turkey signed wide-ranging agreements with Damascus and Baghdad on security and political and economic cooperation. Turkey and Syria agreed to abolish visas between the two countries.

The Turkish statements came after the United States said on Thursday it was abandoning plans to install a missile shield in Eastern Europe and US President Barack Obama said a stronger, swifter defense system would be put in place instead to protect US allies against any threat from Iran.

Washington's Thursday announcement, when considered along with Turkey's decision to purchase Patriot missiles, led to speculations over Washington's probable interest in stationing a missile system in a country bordering Iran amid ongoing tensions over Tehran's nuclear program.

It is not possible to arrive at the conclusion that Turkey has decided to purchase Patriot missiles as part of a plan for housing a missile defense system in Turkey after the US scrapped plans for a missile defense system based in Poland, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Özügergin told reporters earlier this week.

Still, US daily The Washington Times on Thursday suggested that the announcement by the Obama administration that it is canceling missile defense deployments in Europe may be part of a trade that includes sending other missiles to Turkey.

A European diplomat who asked not to be named because he was discussing intergovernmental talks told The Washington Times that the United States was looking for a less costly alternative more in tune with its evaluation of Iran's missile program. “This was a costly program,” he was quoted as saying by the daily, in an apparent reference to the scrapped deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic. “They may find other ways to do this was less cost … with missiles of a different type in theater,” the diplomat said, adding that the reported sale of Patriot anti-missile systems to Turkey “could be part of that assessment.”

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, meanwhile, said the proposed sale to Turkey, of which Congress was notified last week, was not part of the new missile defense strategy.

“However, the White House said the shift in strategy is away from fixed missile defense positions in Eastern Europe and toward a system it said will be more flexible and adaptable and focused on short- and mid-range missiles from Iran rather than long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles,” The Washington Times reported.