Erdogan’s Son-in-Law Rides U.S. Navy’s Largest Aircraft Carrier in Joint Exercises with Turkey

The United States and Turkey held their largest joint military exercise in seven years last week, including Turkish F-16 fighters flying alongside American F-18s and a port call by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.

The exercise was interpreted by diplomatic analysts as a sign of Turkey moving back into alignment with the United States and NATO after a long chill that began with the coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016.

Bloomberg News saw the joint exercise as thanks to Erdogan for dropping his opposition to Sweden joining NATO and a signal that NATO still values Turkey as a member despite some rough patches over the past few years.

Turkish officials told Bloomberg that Erdogan hopes the next step in rebuilding relations will come at the G-20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. Erdogan hopes to meet with President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the summit.

An interesting guest attended the joint military exercise at the invitation of U.S. officials: Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar, chief technology officer of Baykar Industries, whose Bayraktar series of drones are one of the hottest military products in the world. Bayraktar is often mentioned as a potential successor to the authoritarian Erdogan, who was reelected to a third term in May but said he would not run for the presidency again.

Bayraktar conducted a technical inspection on USS Gerald R. Ford, along with a group of Turkish military commanders, at the invitation of U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry Flake. Bayraktar reportedly returned the favor by discussing the development of his latest drone, the TB3, with his American hosts. The TB3 is designed to be launched from ships much smaller than an American aircraft carrier, including the Turkish Navy’s largest vessel, the amphibious assault ship TCG Andalou.

In addition to Turkish unhappiness with the U.S. response to the 2016 coup — especially the refusal of successive American administrations to hand over the alleged mastermind, Pennsylvania resident and former Erdogan ally Fethullah Gülen — relations chilled because Turkey insisted on buying S-400 surface-to-air missiles from Russia.

Turkey was removed from the F-35 joint strike fighter program in 2019 over its insistence on buying the Russian missiles. Among the objections raised by the United States was that S-400s are designed to shoot down NATO planes like the F-35 and it would be dangerous for Turkey to give Russian surface-to-air missile technicians a close look at the advanced fighter plane.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Turkey over its S-400 purchases, but Erdogan stubbornly refused to back down on his $2.5 billion Russian missile deal. Turkey began taking delivery of its S-400 missiles in July 2019. The Biden administration’s reaction to Turkey’s second shipment of S-400s in August 2022 was notably muted, with no threats of additional sanctions.

However, Turkey began sending some different signals in March 2023, with defense manufacturers close to Erdogan predicting Turkey’s domestically produced missiles would soon outstrip the Russian S-400 in performance. 

Some analysts believe these comments gave Erodgan cover for deciding not to buy any more S-400 systems — a weapon Turkey mostly seemed to want because it could help establish air superiority over parts of Syria, a much lower priority now that the Syrian civil war is winding down. Also, like many other Russian weapons, the S-400’s quality has come into question after some embarrassing failures during the Ukraine invasion.

Turkish officials said Erdogan plans to visit Russia “soon” for more talks with President Vladimir Putin, possibly at the resort city of Sochi before Erdogan heads for the G20 summit in India on September 8.

Erdogan hopes to be a major broker for a peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Turkey helped arrange the only major agreement between Moscow and Kyiv since the war began in February 2022, the deal that allowed grain to be shipped from Ukraine across the Black Sea. The deal collapsed in July, but Erdogan reportedly hopes to revive it.