Egypt and Turkey may face U.S. sanctions in the near future for purchasing advanced Russian military hardware. Despite prior warnings, they pushed ahead with their respective acquisitions anyway. Why have both countries concluded that the procurement of these particular weapons systems is worth the risk?

Cairo has reportedly began taking delivery of the first five of at least 20 Su-35SE “Super Flankers” it ordered from Moscow. The sleek and advanced multirole air superiority fighters were also recently photographed in Russia. 

The delivery of this first batch seems to confirm that Cairo pushed ahead with its reported $2 billion deal for these new warplanes despite warnings from the United States. 

Last November, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defence Mark Esper tried to convince Egyptian Defence Minister Mohamed Ahmed Zaki Mohamed to cancel the deal in a letter. 

“Major new arms deals with Russia would – at a minimum – complicate future U.S. defence transactions with and security assistance to Egypt,” the letter reportedly warned. 

The U.S. provides Egypt with approximately $1.3 billion in military aid each year. Much of the Egyptian military arsenal consists of American hardware: everything from F-16 Fighting Falcons fighter jets to AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships and M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks. 

In 2017, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) became federal law. Under that law, any country that makes a “significant transaction” with Russia’s defence sector should face U.S. sanctions. The estimated $2 billion Su-35 deal most certainly constitutes a “significant transaction.”

Given these risks, it’s questionable why Egypt pushed ahead with this procurement. 

Egypt has already spent billions of dollars on advanced military hardware from both Russia and France in recent years. It purchased two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships and a fleet of advanced Rafale multirole fighter jets from France. 

From Russia, Egypt acquired the most Russian-made military hardware in the 2010s than it has since the 1970s. Acquisitions to date include a fleet of MiG-29M/M2 Fulcrums, Ka-52 attack helicopters, and advanced S-300 air defence missile systems. Cairo ordered these weapons before CAATSA became law.

It’s likely that these purchases were at least partially aimed at diversifying the sources for Egypt’s military hardware to make it less reliant on Washington and less vulnerable to any potential U.S. arms embargo. 

Also, some of these weapon systems gave Egypt capabilities it hitherto did not have. 

For example, Egypt’s fleet of F-16s conspicuously lack long-range AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, which most other F-16s in Middle East air forces, with the notable exception of Iraq, possess. 

Egypt’s Rafales, on the other hand, are armed with Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missiles. If Egypt’s new supermanoeuvrable Su-35s are armed with R-77 missiles, the Russian equivalent to the AMRAAM, then its French and Russian fighters will undoubtedly overshadow its American ones when it comes to their air-to-air capabilities. 

If it’s confident that it can either avoid or weather any potential U.S. sanctions over its Su-35 procurement and further diversify its military in the process, Cairo may well have calculated that this procurement is worth that risk. 

Turkey’s acquisition of an advanced Russian system has so far proven much more controversial in Washington. The NATO member purchased and began taking delivery of long-range S-400 air defence missile systems, straining relations with the United States. 

Since the $2.5 billion deal was first announced three years ago, the U.S. repeatedly warned Turkey to cancel it. Ankara staunchly refused.

When Turkey finally began taking delivery of the first components of the system in July 2019, the U.S. immediately suspended it from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and cancelled Turkey’s order for a fleet of those stealthy fifth-generation jets. 

F-35s initially intended for the Turkish Air Force are already being diverted to the U.S. Air Force. 

Under CAATSA, Turkey’s purchase also necessitates U.S. sanctions. However, the Trump administration has avoided imposing any to date and is reluctant to do so. 

Nevertheless, it may soon have to.

In July, the House passed the annual defence authorization bill that included a bipartisan provision calling for sanctions on Turkey for the S-400 procurement. The legislation cited the CAATSA condition for sanctions on countries that make a “significant transaction” with Russia’s defence sector. 

The bill will require Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey within one month after it becomes law. Under its terms, the only way Turkey can avoid these sanctions is to remove all S-400 components from the country. 

How did it come to this? 

Turkey conspicuously lacks any other high-altitude long-range air defence missile system. For years, it has relied on much older medium-altitude systems like the MIM-23 Hawk, which are incomparable to newer, more advanced systems like the S-400 or the American MIM-104 Patriot. 

It is, therefore, understandable that Turkey wants advanced air defence systems. It’s also understandable that it doesn’t want to have to indefinitely rely on U.S. or NATO deployments of Patriot missiles to protect its airspace. 

In March 2015, a Syrian Scud missile crashed into Turkey’s Hatay border province, afflicting minor injuries on five Turkish civilians and causing some property damage. NATO Patriot missiles deployed in southern Turkey did not even attempt to intercept the Scud, which luckily did not kill anyone or cause further damage. 

One reason those Patriots remained idle was because the primary objective of their deployment was to protect a radar in Turkey for tracking missile launches in neighbouring Iran, not protecting Turkish territory from such stray missiles. 

More recently, Turkey had no active high-altitude air defences to deploy on its southern border with Syria during unprecedented clashes with Syrian regime forces in Idlib in February and March 2020. It requested a U.S. Patriot deployment, Washington didn’t deploy any missiles. 

While such incidents do shed some light on why Turkey sought its own high-altitude air defences, they don’t explain why it pushed for procuring Russian systems rather than American or other Western ones. After all, buying from the U.S. or any Western country certainly would not have incurred sanctions or severely complicated its relationship with the rest of the NATO alliance. 

The U.S. offered to sell Turkey Patriot missiles for $3.5 billion if it cancelled its S-400 deal in December 2018. Ankara refused. The U.S. offer automatically expired after Turkey took delivery of its first S-400 components in July 2019. Ankara remains open to potentially purchasing Patriots but only in addition to S-400s, not instead of them. 

Turkey previously claimed it decided against purchasing Patriot missiles since the U.S. refused to transfer the missile’s technology as part of any deal. However, the S-400 deal has not come with any technology transfer agreement to date, so that reason hardly justifies Turkey’s controversial choice.

A compelling theory that might explain why Turkey risked and sacrificed so much to get its hands on S-400s concerns the Turkish government’s desire to defend Ankara’s airspace from another coup attempt. 

On July 15, 2016, coup plotters commandeered some Turkish F-16s and bombed Ankara, including the Turkish parliament. Turkey’s Western-built air defences proved ineffective against Turkey’s own air force.

In the event of another similar coup attempt, Turkish S-400s that are not integrated with the country’s air defence networks could rapidly combat such airborne threats. 

While the real motives behind these acquisitions remain unclear, what is clear is that both Cairo and Ankara believe the benefits of fielding such advanced Russian hardware outweigh the risks of antagonizing their American ally.