Turkey loses out in new F-35 jets deal after buying Russian missiles

Turkey says it has been excluded from the F-35 fighter jet partnership after it bought the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft weapons system.

The official Turkish news agency, Anadolu, said the US informed the Turkish government of its removal from a new agreement reached between the eight countries in the F-35 consortium, which replaces a 2006 deal that included Ankara.

The signatories to the new deal are the US, Australia, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway and Denmark.

A US Defence Department official did not comment on the new agreement, but said that the process of expelling Turkey from the F-35 consortium had been under way since July 2019.

“We continue to move forward with the process of formally removing Turkey from the F-35 partnership, as announced in July 2019,” Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell told The National.

Ms Maxwell said Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 system began the process.

“The S-400 is incompatible with the F-35 and Turkey has been suspended from the programme,” she said.

Turkey joined the US F-35 consortium in 2002 and planned to buy 100 of the fifth-generation fighters before it bought the S-400 missile system from Russia.

Each F-35 fighter costs about $90 million.

US officials said they feared Russia could use the S-400 to acquire intelligence on the F-35 and Nato members’ defence systems.

The S-400 acquisition was also deemed a breach of Congress’s Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act that does not permit significant transactions with Russia.

Although Turkey lost access to the F-35, it continues to manufacture parts for the programme that are then purchased by the US.

The contract ends next year. Aaron Stein, research director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Turkey’s exclusion was not a surprise.

“It’s nothing new for Turkey, rather a continuation of what has been happening since 2019,” Mr Stein, an expert and author on Turkish politics, told The National.

“What it shows is solidarity across the F-35 programme, that all the multinational partners have basically put in writing that they are pushing forward without Ankara.”

Despite a recent increase in co-operation between Washington and Ankara on Afghanistan, and a meeting between their top diplomats in Brussels, American President Joe Biden has still not called Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish president was expected to attend this weekend’s US-hosted online climate summit.