Vance Says US Reviewing Path to Sell F-35 Jets to Turkey
Vice President Vance confirms a formal review is underway to explore how Turkey could rejoin the F-35 program after years of exclusion.
The United States is actively examining how Turkey might regain access to the F-35 fighter jet program, Vice President JD Vance confirmed, signaling a potential thaw in one of NATO's most consequential and long-running defense disputes. The review represents a notable shift in posture from Washington, which expelled Ankara from the program in 2019 after Turkey purchased Russia's S-400 missile defense system — a move that triggered sanctions under US law.
Turkey's removal from the F-35 program carried significant strategic weight. Ankara had been a manufacturing partner in the aircraft's supply chain, and Turkish defense firms stood to benefit commercially from the arrangement. The expulsion left Turkey without the advanced stealth fighter it had planned to integrate into its air force, prompting Ankara to accelerate its own domestic aviation ambitions while continuing to press Washington for a path back in.
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The timing of this review is analytically significant. It comes amid broader US efforts to deepen engagement with Ankara on a range of regional issues, including the conflict in Ukraine and Turkish influence in the Middle East and the Caucasus. Reintegrating Turkey into the F-35 ecosystem — whether as a buyer, a parts supplier, or both — would require navigating the CAATSA sanctions framework that Congress put in place precisely to deter allies from purchasing Russian military hardware.
Any resolution will demand careful legal and diplomatic engineering. A waiver or legislative carve-out would be necessary to move Turkey back into good standing under US arms export rules, and that process would likely draw scrutiny from lawmakers who remain wary of rewarding Ankara for its S-400 purchase. Still, the fact that a formal review is underway at the vice-presidential level suggests the administration views the relationship with Turkey as worth the political complexity.
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