The delivery of F-35 fighter jets from the United States to Turkey will remain on “hold” by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID), despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent claim that he made progress on getting the planes in a meeting with President Donald Trump at the NATO summit last month.
Risch announced that he will continue to block the transfer of six completed Lockheed Martin jets that Turkey has already paid for during a July 9 hearing for Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Greece, Aviation Week reported.
“I’ve got a hold on and I’m going to continue to have that hold for a lot of different reasons,” Risch said. “As far as Turkey is concerned, I’m the one that put the hold on the F-35s, and the F-35s they bought and paid for are still sitting in the United States.”
While the chairman does not have the unilateral power to veto the jets’ delivery, he does have the authority to place an indefinite hold on arms transfers.
Just two weeks before, Erdoğan said “Mr. Trump was well-intentioned about delivering them,” after the two leaders met at the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Breitbart News reported.
“We discussed the F-35 issue. We made payments of $1.3 to $1.4 billion for the jets,” the Turkish president said, before calling Trump his “friend” who will help usher in a “new chapter in Turkish-American relations.”
Erdoğan has been trying to get his hands on the jets for years after his country was removed from NATO’s F-35 program during Trump’s first administration for purchasing the Russian-made S-400 air defense system against the Pentagon’s wishes.
“We have… been clear that acquisition of the [Russian] S-400 is not compatible with the F-35,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a spokesman of the Department of Defense (DOD) said in 2019 after Turkey scheduled the purchase of the missile system. “We very much regret the current situation… but the DOD is taking prudent steps to protect the shared investments made in our critical technology.”
“The DOD told Erdoğan that buying S-400 missiles would not be ‘compatible’ with the F-35 program, since the F-35 is the very jet fighter that Russia designed the S-400 to shoot down,” Breitbart News’s John Hayward wrote last month. “The risk of Turkey having F-35s in convenient nearby hangers for Russian missile technicians to inspect was too high.”
Still, Erdoğan remains set on obtaining the jets.
“We have not given up on the F-35s. We are discussing our intention to return to the program with our counterparts,” he told reporters during his flight home from the NATO summit.
“We discussed the issue in our meeting with Mr. Trump, talks at a technical level have started. God willing, we will make progress,” he added.
Getting around the indefinite hold is not simple, as Turkey’s possession of the S-400 violates the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and triggered Section 1245 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which “explicitly prohibits the delivery of F-35 jets to Turkey” as long as they have the Russian system, Aviation Week reported.
The White House has the power to lift CAATSA sanctions, but it does not have authority to waive Section 1245 of the NDAA. However, the section does allow a transfer of F-35s if the secretaries of State and Defense — Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth — certify to Congress that Turkey no longer has the S-400 and will not try to get it back.
A bipartisan effort to continue blocking the jet delivery is being championed by Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) and other congressmembers of Greek descent, including Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), and Dina Titus (D-NV), Greek outlet Kathimerini reported Thursday.
The aforementioned lawmakers reportedly authored a letter and are circulating it around the House of Representatives “aiming to rally support” before being sent to Rubio, according to the outlet.
Senior U.S. officials have previously floated the idea of transferring the Russian system obtained by Erdoğan to the American-controlled sector of Incirlik base in the south of Turkey in order to get around Section 1245, the publication reported in September 2024.
While Guilfoyle, the ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., said during the Senate hearing that she would follow policies set by Trump, she agreed with the reasoning behind holding on the jet delivery.
“There are choices that people in countries make in life, and Turkey has chosen to work with the Russians with the S-400s,” the hopeful ambassador to Greece said.
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