Pro-gov't businessman: If Erdoğan does not buy S-400s, we'll be at odds

Duvar English

Turkish vehicle producer BMC's chair Ethem Sancak has said that he sides with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan due to his “national stance” and if he were ever to give up on the Russian made S-400 air defense missile systems due to a pressure from the United States, he would confront him.

Sancak, who had previously declared his "love" for Erdoğan, made the comments during a TV show aired on Habertürk on Dec. 16.

Asked on the TV show if “his love for Erdoğan continues,” Sancak said: “As long as Erdoğan is taking this [national] stance, being his soldier will be an honor for me, but the day he leaves that [stance], he will find me against him. If Tayyip Erdoğan would say 'I am not buying the S-400s, I gave up on them,' he would find me against him.”

Sancak talked of his socialist past and said that he had previously conducted politics with many people known to have a leftist stance, from Deniz Geçmiş, a Marxist-Leninist political activist in Turkey in the late 1960s, to Deniz Baykal, the former leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).

Asked why he now sides with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Sancak said: “I got to know Erdoğan when he became a lawmaker candidate from the [southeastern province of] Siirt. I decided to support him so that a prime minister would be elected from [my hometown] Siirt.”

“I saw that Erdoğan did not lie to the people and displayed a national stance. I also saw that the world's strategy would be gradually leaning towards an anti-imperialist stance. And I did not want to be a leftist carrying the American flag. If Erdoğan had not quarreled with the U.S., I would not have stood by him either.”

Asked if he “saw where the world's strategy would be heading towards 17 years ago,” Sancak said: “I am a man who foresees the future a bit ahead.”