The decision, according to Yeni Şafak, resembles the one made by the US during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then Washington agreed to remove American PGM-19 Jupiter ballistic missiles installed in Turkey and Italy as part of a deal which saw the Soviet Union dismantle missiles in Cuba.
The US announcement regarding the Patriot surface-to-air systems came days after Germany said it would do the same. The batteries were deployed to Turkey in 2013 in response to the downing of a Turkish plane by Syrian forces. Damascus, Moscow and Tehran were against the deployment, the newspaper noted.
Yeni Şafak maintains the move is part of the ongoing bargaining between the US and Russia, with Syria and Ukraine's issues closely tied to one another.
The newspaper listed other pieces of the puzzle underlying the US' decision to dismantle the Patriot systems in Turkey: Syria no longer poses a serious missile threat, the painful process of tackling the Kurdish issue, the campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the promises the West made to Iran.
"Each of them is probably important but marginal and gives us limited understanding of the bigger picture. We need a framework, a root cause… The pullout of Patriots could be the first major indication of a rapprochement and understanding between the US and Russia," the newspaper observed.
