President Donald Trump told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday that Washington would remove the sanctions it imposed on Turkey in 2020 over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system.
“We are going to be taking the sanctions off," Trump said, standing alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Bestepe Presidential Compound during the NATO summit.
On the separate question of whether Turkey can buy American F-35 stealth fighters, Trump stopped short of a firm commitment. “It’s a decision we’re going to make," he said, calling the jet the best plane by far.
The New York Times had reported a day earlier, citing four senior administration officials, that Trump was expected to tell Erdogan he was prepared to let Turkey rejoin the programme.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a CNN interview with journalist Dana Bash on Tuesday to say he had personally urged Trump against the sale, arguing it would upset the region’s military balance. Selling the jet, he said, “doesn’t make Turkey a friendly state to the United States."
Netanyahu also criticised Erdogan’s government, describing it as influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The exchange came amid a wider deterioration in Turkey-Israel relations. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had told CNN Turk the previous week that Israel had become intolerable to the wider world, remarks that drew a sharp rebuke from Israel’s foreign ministry.
Turkey signed on as a founding industrial partner in the F-35 programme, and Turkish manufacturers built an estimated 900 components for the aircraft, while Ankara had planned to buy around 100 F-35As.
That ended in July 2019, when Turkey took delivery of the Russian S-400 missile system, prompting Washington to expel it from the programme. In December 2020, the US added CAATSA sanctions against Turkey’s Presidency of Defence Industries, the state body running the country’s arms procurement, including export licence bans and financial restrictions.
The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) is a United States federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia. It accomplishes this goal by preventing U.S. companies from doing business with sanctioned entities, or with countries that engage in business with sanctioned entities.
The announcement came as Trump praised Turkey’s role in defusing tensions with Iran, saying Ankara had been more helpful than other NATO members on the issue, and describing the country as an ‘extraordinary ally’.
The administration has already shown a willingness to bypass congressional resistance on Turkish defence deals. In late June it notified Congress of a $700 million engine sale for Turkey’s domestically built KAAN fighter programme, overriding a hold placed by Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks.
Getting Turkey back into the F-35 programme runs into the 2020 National Defence Authorization Act, which bars transferring the jets to Ankara unless it no longer possesses the S-400 system or any related equipment.
Congress wrote that provision without a presidential waiver, meaning Trump cannot simply overturn it by decree. Erdogan told reporters he hoped for a “favourable decision," adding that Turkey had previously been promised five jets under the original deal.
Reaction on Capitol Hill is split. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Turkiye Today he was open to the idea, while Senator Mike Rounds, travelling with a congressional delegation in Ankara, told CNN that resolving the S-400 dispute would be “good news for NATO."
A bipartisan group of lawmakers had already written to Trump opposing any F-35 sale before the summit began, and Republican Senator John Cornyn offered a blunt, one-line dismissal when asked about it. No formal decision has been announced on the jets, and the sanctions relief itself has yet to be codified in writing or published in the Federal Register.
