President Donald Trump is set to host Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a state visit at the White House next Thursday.
Trump announced Erdoğan’s forthcoming visit in a Truth Social post on Friday.
“We are working on many Trade and Military Deals with the President, including the large scale purchase of Boeing aircraft, a major F-16 Deal, and a continuation of the F-35 talks, which we expect to conclude positively,” Trump noted in the post.
“President Erdoğan and I have always had a very good relationship. I look forward to seeing him on the 25th!” he added.
In July, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) said a hold would remain on delivering six completed F-35 fighter jets from the United States to Turkey.
“I’ve got a hold on and I’m going to continue to have that hold for a lot of different reasons,” he said in part.
Erdoğan said weeks earlier that Trump was “well-intentioned about” the F-35s’ delivery during a meeting they had at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit in the Netherlands in June.
“We discussed the F-35 issue. We made payments of $1.3 to $1.4 billion for the jets,” Erdoğan said, adding that Trump is a “friend.”
Turkey was removed from NATO’s F-35 program in 2019 in response to its purchase of an S-400 air defense system from Russia, and in August, a group of 40 lawmakers wrote a letter calling on the Trump administration to deny Turkey reentry into the program, amid reports it was seeking readmission.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to U.S. aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35. If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence,” the lawmakers wrote.
Erdoğan visited the White House twice during Trump’s first term. He first trip to the Trump White House came in May 2017, followed by a second visit in November 2019.
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