Trump Says He'll Lift Turkey Sanctions and Weigh Selling F-35s, Rewarding Erdogan at NATO Summit
Standing alongside President Erdogan in Ankara, Trump declared it was 'time' to drop the 2020 penalties imposed over Turkey's purchase of Russian air defenses — and floated returning Ankara to the F-35 stealth-fighter program.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States would lift sanctions on Turkey and was weighing whether to sell the country F-35 stealth fighter jets, an abrupt reset with a difficult NATO ally delivered on the sidelines of the alliance's summit in Ankara.
"I can tell you we're going to take the sanctions off," Trump said during a state arrival ceremony hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We're going to be taking the sanctions off. It's time to do that, OK?" On the far more sensitive question of the F-35, Trump was more guarded but still upbeat, calling a potential sale "a decision we're going to make."
The sanctions Trump pledged to remove were imposed in 2020 under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, known as CAATSA, after Turkey purchased the Russian-made S-400 air defense system. Washington deemed that acquisition a "significant transaction" with Moscow and, citing the risk that the S-400's radar could be used to gather intelligence on the F-35's stealth features, expelled Turkey from the multinational program that builds and operates the jet.
Undoing that expulsion is legally fraught. A 2020 law requires any administration to certify that Turkey no longer possesses or operates the Russian systems before it can rejoin the F-35 effort, and Trump did not explain how such a transaction would clear that hurdle. Erdogan, for his part, claimed he had already been promised five of the aircraft. Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were coordinating the effort to unwind the penalties.
Trump framed the concessions as a reward for loyalty, suggesting Turkey had been "more helpful" than other partners on Iran and "more loyal" than some fellow NATO members — pointed language delivered as the alliance gathered to discuss defense spending and the war in Ukraine. The overture caps a striking turnaround for a relationship that has swung between crisis and rapprochement for a decade, and it hands Erdogan a major diplomatic prize. Whether Congress and the legal machinery built to punish Ankara's tilt toward Moscow will allow the president to follow through remains an open question.
Originally reported by ABC News.