Turkish Gov’t Welcomes Apparent US State Dept Green Light For F-16 Deal

The US State Department sent a letter to Congress indicating Turkey’s long-delayed plan to purchase US-manufactured F-35 fighter jets could finally bear fruit–just not quite the fruit the Turkish government had hoped for.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday that Ankara welcomes the State Department’s position that the "Biden administration believes a potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey would be in line with US national security interests and also serve NATO's long-term unity.”

The US stance was revealed in a March 17th letter which was reportedly sent by the State Department’s top legislative affairs official to Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who recently demanded a stop to the arms deal, citing Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s supposed lack of commitment to NATO and what he and a bipartisan group of 50 lawmakers called "vast human rights abuses.”

While the letter doesn’t explicitly endorse the weapons deal, it opens the door to a possible way for Erdogan to recoup the $1.4 billion in Turkish public funds Washington has been sitting on since blocking the transfer of F-35 jets to Turkish authorities mid-sale in 2019 after Turkey’s acquisition of Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile systems. The US went on to unleash a variety of punitive sanctions on the country as well, claiming the missile system posed a potential security threat to the F-35 program.

Turkey has maintained the S-400 would not be integrated into NATO systems and would not pose a threat to the military alliance or the F-35, and is moving ahead with plans to purchase a second batch of S-400s despite US intimidation.

According to military scholars, the F-35 likely faces more pressing threats; in July 2021, the Pentagon admitted there were still seven “critical technical deficiencies” and 850 “category 2 deficiencies” which had to be addressed before the plane could enter general production. In late November, an F-35 reportedly sold to the UK Royal Navy by Lockheed Martin for a tidy sum of $115 million tumbled to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea after it suffered engine failure and failed to take off from an aircraft carrier. And last month, the US Navy was forced to fish an F-35 out of the South China Sea after another of what Lockheed Martin calls the world’s “most lethal, survivable and connected fighter jet” suffered a similar fate.

For now, at least, Ankara has signaled it’s content to take the more reliable F-16 fighter jets instead. Last month, President Erdogan’s office said he told Biden in a phone call that he expects Turkey’s request for 40 of the planes to be finalized as soon as possible and demanded an end to the “unjust” sanctions imposed by the US on Turkey in 2020.

But any approval for the deal is expected to be met with heavy resistance from US Congress. Rep. Pallone likely spoke for dozens of his colleagues when he wrote Thursday on Twitter that going forward with the deal would be a “huge mistake.”