President Donald Trump hinted at potential plans to lift U.S. sanctions and reverse a ban on the sale of F-35s to Turkey during a bilateral meeting Tuesday with the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara.
Trump said the moves, which would both upend years-old foreign policy implemented during his first term, were made because of his close friendship with Erdoğan and the country’s support for American military efforts in the Middle East.
“Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal, so something certainly we would consider,” Trump said Tuesday when asked about reversing the ban on F-35s. “It’s a great plan.”
Trump also said he worked with multiple members of his cabinet, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, to discuss lifting sanctions on Turkey.
Trending
“There’s plenty of people we can sanction, and we are saying we don’t want to sanction friends,” Trump said.
Trump implemented the ban on F-35s in 2019 after Turkey purchased the Russian S-400 air defense missile system. The U.S. government urged Erdoğan to purchase the American Patriot missile system when Turkey began publicly exploring purchasing the Russian technology in early 2017. The U.S. imposed sanctions on Turkey in 2020 through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act after its purchase of the Russian missile system.
“Turkey cannot have both the Russian system and the fifth-generation fighter,” the Department of Defense wrote in a 2019 press release about the ban.
Trump downplayed any concerns about Russia potentially gleaning any information about the F-35’s advanced capabilities — including the aircraft’s ability to avoid radar — through its S-400 missile system in Turkey.
“I have no concerns about anything having to do with Turkey’s relationship,” Trump said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relationship with Trump has turned rocky in recent weeks over the country’s brutal military operation in Lebanon, expressed concerns about the U.S. lifting the ban this week.
“I don’t think they should be given F-35s or the engines for their fighter jets, because that’ll upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and also by, I think, by America’s posture in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said Monday during an interview on Fox News.
It remains unclear what will happen to Turkey’s supply of S-400 missiles under any potential deal, according to The New York Times’ first report on the plan.
The prohibition on F-35s was codified by Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, with section 1245 of that NDAA explicitly prohibiting the transfer of the aircraft to Turkey. The law required that Turkey “no longer possesses the S-400 air and missile defense system or any other equipment, materials, or personnel associated with such system,” in order to rescind the ban.
Congress also codified the CAATSA sanctions against Turkey, citing the country’s purchase of the Russian missile system, in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.
Since the sanctions and the ban on F-35s are incorporated into federal law, Trump would technically need congressional approval to pursue these policy reversals for Turkey — though Trump has unilaterally made a number of both foreign and domestic policy decisions without consulting Congress since the start of his second term.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) told CNN he thought Trump’s decision to lift the ban would be “good news” but noted that he hoped the concerns about Turkey’s use of the Russian missile system “have been resolved.”
“If the president is there and his team has said, ‘We‘ve got it figured out,’ that would be really good news for NATO, because that means we’d have one more country that would have access to the F-35 in their fleet,” Rounds said ahead of Trump’s comments on Tuesday.
Rounds is part of a bipartisan congressional delegation, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), in Ankara for the NATO summit. But back home in Washington, not every member of Congress shared Rounds’ positive sentiment about Trump’s decision to lift the ban.
“I hope this is wrong,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote on X, responding to a post about Trump’s potential decision to resume U.S. sales of F-35s to Turkey.
In addition to Trump’s changes in policy toward Turkey, the ongoing war in Ukraine cast a long shadow over the summit as European leaders consider their next steps and U.S. officials signal that they are tiring of the now more than four-year conflict.
While some of his Republican colleagues have echoed Trump’s calls for Europe to handle the financial and military support for Ukraine, Cornyn has remained steadfast in support for the war-torn nation.
Mark Rutte, secretary general of NATO, also expressed staunch support for Ukraine and encouraged allies to get on board.
“All allies need to pull their weight, so that our support to Ukraine continues to flow, because Ukraine’s security is so closely linked with our own,” Rutte said Monday at a press conference.
Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the summit. The president said both leaders “want to make a deal” but any settlement “doesn’t seem likely now.”
“But sometimes with war, see when it’s least likely, that’s when it happens,” Trump said.
Author
