After days of silence about whether Turkey will be punished for accepting
, U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear: Turkey will now be cut off from the F-35.
“And we are now telling Turkey ... we’re not going to sell you the
,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.
“It’s a very tough situation that they’re in. And it’s a very tough situation that we’ve been placed in the United States," Trump said. “With all of that being said, we’re working through it. We’ll see what happens, but it’s not really fair.”
Notably, the president did not say whether he would impose sanctions on Turkey under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or
. But members of Congress this week said the law is very clear: Trump has no choice but to sanction its NATO ally.
Trump’s announcement makes official what had been expected for months — that the decision to purchase the S-400, a Russian made system, would require Turkey be divested from the F-35 program. However, the delay in responding to the S-400’s arrival in Turkey had led to speculation Trump was looking to avoid a fight with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom he has expressed friendliness with in the past.
Erdoğan, for his part, has expressed a belief that Trump has the authority to waive sanctions on Turkey for its purchase of the Russian air defense systems and must “find the middle ground.” But Trump may find Congress closed the door to compromise last year when it set a high bar to waive U.S. sanctions on countries that buy Russian weapons.
Lawmakers from both parties said the waiver language was included to accommodate allies India and Vietnam, it was tailor-made not to let Turkey off the hook for its purchase of the S-400, and a waiver would be impermissible under current circumstances. The White House, under the law, will instead have to choose from the law’s menu of sanctions, several lawmakers said.
“There’s wide latitude about what to do about the sanctions, but the sanctions certainly need to be put in place,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a Turkey critic and one of the lawmakers involved in drafting the waiver provision, said Tuesday.
Stealthy Trouble
The U.S. and other NATO allies have expressed alarm for several years over the purchase of the S-400, reportedly costing more than $2 billion, over concerns that plugging the Russian system into the alliance could lead to data leaks and security breaches, including concerns it would allow Russians to gain information about the stealthy F-35 fighter.
The Turkish Defence Ministry on July 12 announced it has received the first pieces of the S-400 at Murted Air Base, located near Ankara. That delivery had been marked as a point that would trigger sanctions against Turkey, while also serving as a breaking point for Ankara’s participation in the F-35 program.
The Pentagon initially called a press briefing the morning of July 12, then rescheduled it for later that day; it was eventually postponed indefinitely. No statement about the F-35’s fate had been issued until Tuesday, when Secretary of Defense nominee Mark Esper was asked about it during a Senate confirmation hearing.
“It’s certainly disappointing. Those are my words. Very disappointing,” Esper said. “The policy that I’ve communicated to my counterpart, if confirmed, defense minister, is you can either have the S-400 or the F-35. You cannot have both. Acquisition of the S-400 fundamentally undermines the capabilities of the F-35 and our ability to maintain that overmatch in the skies going forward.”
Turkey, a partner in the F-35 program that helped fund the development of the jet, plans to buy 100 F-35As. Its first jet was rolled out in June 2018 in a festive “delivery ceremony,” but although Turkey formally owns its jets, the United States has the power to keep the planes from moving to Turkish soil and intends to keep all four existing Turkish jets from leaving the United States. The U.S. has already stopped training Turkish pilots on the F-35 and has given Ankara until the end of July to get its personnel out of the U.S.
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