Erdogan’s Turkey must not get the F-35

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

President Trump has always had a peculiar affection for strongmen. He admires rulers who concentrate power, dominate institutions, intimidate enemies and present themselves as the living embodiment of the nation.

Few fit that description better than Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Perhaps that is why Trump now wants to sell him F-35 stealth fighters, even though it would irreparably harm American security.

Ankara was expelled from F35 eligibility in 2019 after it chose to purchase Russia’s S-400 air defense system. This was done for a good reason: A partnership with Russian air defense systems weakens the F35’s ability to evade Russian radar — which was, inter alia, critical to the ability of the U.S. (and Israel) to control the skies over Iran in the recent war with that country’s regime.

At the NATO conference this week, Trump said he would lift sanctions on Turkey and consider selling it these planes. He must not. The fear that Moscow could gain insight into NATO’s most advanced aircraft will probably create congressional hurdles to the administration’s plans to make such a sale. But there are plenty of other reasons to resist this idea as well.

For one thing, it would reward one of the Western alliance’s most successful authoritarian rulers. Turkey under Erdogan still holds elections, but the foundations that make elections meaningful have been destroyed. In Erdogan’s Turkey, judges are pressured, journalists are jailed, academics are dismissed, civil servants are purged, generals are prosecuted and opposition figures are harassed.

After the failed coup attempt of 2016, Erdogan used the emergency to pass constitutional changes have made the presidency into his personal instrument of rule. Critically, the press has been brought to heel through a mixture of state control, crony ownership, intimidation and prosecution. Reporters Without Borders now ranks Turkey 163rd out of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with dismal scores across the political, economic, legal, social and security indicators.

It is truly a mark of shame that a NATO country now sits near the global bottom when it comes to press freedom. That fact alone should give Washington pause before handing Erdogan the most sophisticated fighter aircraft in the American arsenal.

Erdogan has repeatedly strained the alliance whose protection he enjoys. Turkey bought the Russian S-400 system despite American warnings. It delayed Nordic NATO enlargement. It has also created repeated crises with Greece and Cyprus, part of which it effectively occupies.

Erdogan’s Turkey has pursued military operations in Syria that collided with Western priorities. Its backing of Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh helped create the conditions for the flight of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from a region where they had lived for generations. It has flirted with Russia while still demanding the benefits of NATO membership.

That is the heart of the matter. NATO was built as a community of democracies, not a club of transactional military clients. Its members are supposed to share a basic commitment to constitutional government, the rule of law, civilian restraint and collective security. Those values are the reason members trust one another with intelligence, bases, integrated defense systems and advanced weapons. When a member state behaves as Erdogan’s Turkey does, this edifice is badly eroded.

Turkey’s posture toward Israel has made the rot even clearer. Erdogan has long used Israel as a foil, but the rhetoric from his government has become steadily more extreme. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently called Israel “a burden that humanity can no longer bear” and “a problem for the whole world.” Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci has publicly expressed his desire to serve one day as “governor of Jerusalem,” implying that the city would become a Turkish possession for the first time since the Ottoman Empire.

Then came the reaction to Israel’s move toward recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Israel’s Cabinet approved a proposal to recognize formally the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as a genocide, as the United States and most democracies have already done. Turkey reacted with fury.

Supporters of accommodating Turkey always invoke geography. Turkey controls access to the Black Sea, borders the Middle East, sits near Russia, hosts important facilities and possesses NATO’s second-largest military. That is all true, but it proves the opposite of what the appeasers claim. The more strategically important Turkey is, the more America should discourage its slide into authoritarianism under Erdogan and its newly resentful, Islamist-inflected neo-Ottoman streak.

The F-35 is a flying intelligence platform — a symbol of trust and a core component of American and allied air superiority. Countries receive it because Washington believes they will safeguard its technology and not pass it on to Russia. Turkey broke that trust when it bought the S-400.

The Turkish people deserve a democratic future. A free Turkey could again become one of the most important partners of the U.S. and Europe. But Erdogan’s Turkey has moved in the opposite direction. America should not reward that trajectory.

Sadly, Trump’s apparent willingness to look past all this is not surprising. If anything, he is also a fan of Vladimir Putin, at time even seeming to want Russia to prevail in its criminal war against Ukraine. None of that obligates the Republican Party or its representatives in Congress. Rather, they might consider whether such a wholesale abandonment of American values and interests by Trump might not be punished by voters.

Congress should block any restoration of F-35 access while the S-400 issue remains unresolved and while Erdogan continues to behave like an authoritarian spoiler inside the NATO alliance. The U.S. should be telling Turkey that NATO membership carries obligations — that advanced American technology requires trust and that alliances mean more than whether Trump “likes” you.

Dan Perry is the former London-based Europe-Africa editor and Cairo-based Middle East editor for the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and the author of two books.