The president of the United States, Donald Trump, would be willing to advance with the sale, pending for a long time, of f-16 fighters to Turkey and is open to reconsider Ankara’s participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, according to a report from the US media Fox News.
The proposal arose after the recent conversations between Trump and the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and would depend on the resolution of the current dispute over the possession by Turkey of the S-400 Air Defense missile system, of Russian manufacture.
A possible solution that is being considered is to dismant .
The S-400, developed by the Russian company Almaz-Agent, is a long-range mobile-mobile earth-to-air missile system, designed to track and attack multiple aerial objectives, including aircraft and ballistic missiles, at distances of up to 400 kilometers.
The acquisition of the system by Turkey in 2017, by virtue of an agreement of 2.5 billion dollars, caused a strong reaction from the United States and NATO, which generated concern about interoperability and possible violation of NATO sensitive technologies, in particular the sigilo characteristics of the F-35.
As a consequence, the US administration imposed sanctions and, in 2019, Türkiye was formally expelled from the F-35 program, despite having invested more than one billion dollars and having been a key industrial partner. Meanwhile, the country has continued to strengthen its air capacity.
Trump’s gesture by raising the condition on the S-400 could open the door to a normalization of defense relations between the United States and Turkey, NATO partners and members.
