Last Updated On: Feb 18 2021 10:08 Gmt+3 Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has suggested that Turkey and the U.S. could resolve their differences over his country’s procurement of Russian S-400 air defence missile systems by replicating what he called the “Crete model.” He was directly referring to Greece’s possession of older Russian S-300 missiles that have been based on Crete for years now. “We’ve seen this before, whatever the model used for the S-300 on Crete, we’re open to negotiating,” Akar was quoted as saying. Cyprus originally ordered those S-300s in the late 1990s to deter Turkish overflights of its airspace. Ankara threatened to destroy them if they were deployed on the divided island, sparking a major crisis. That crisis was averted when Greece agreed to take delivery of the missiles instead, putting them in storage on Crete. Athens did not activate the systems until a military exercise in 2013.