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ANKARA, TURKEY - OCTOBER 31: Devlet Bahceli, leader of opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) speaks at parliamentary group meeting of MHP lawmakers at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) in Ankara, Turkey on October 31, 2017. Turkish opposition leader Bahceli on Tuesday slammed NATO criticism of Turkey’s decision to buy a Russian-made missile defense system. Bahceli asked why Turkey should have ask NATO about its defense purchases. "Where was NATO when Turkey's national security was surrounded by terrible attacks, what was it doing?" he said. "We can buy weapons from whoever we want, and we never have to justify this to NATO." On Oct, 26 in Washington, Gen. Petr Pavel, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, criticized Turkey for purchasing the Russian S-400 air defense system. On the purchase decision, he said: “The same way that nations are sovereign in making their decision, they are also sovereign in facing the consequences of that decision.” Citing Turkey’s decades-long NATO membership, Bahceli said that Turkey has always fulfilled its responsibilities to the bloc since it joined, in 1952. Bahceli also decried NATO's lack of response to last year’s coup attempt in Turkey by the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO). "What measures did NATO take against FETO's July 15 coup attempt, what preventive measures has NATO put into effect?" he said. Bahceli said that Turkey is an independent country that can buy whatever weapons it wants based on its needs. "We are not looking at NATO but Qandil,” the northern Iraqi headquarters of the terrorist PKK, he said. “We’re engaged in a life and death struggle with murderers." (Footage by Emir S. Demirci/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)