Six years ago the United States took Turkey's F-35s away. The jets Ankara had already paid for went into storage in the Arizona desert, Turkish pilots were sent home from Luke Air Force Base, and roughly 100 stealth fighters on order evaporated. On Tuesday, sitting next to Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the presidential palace in Ankara, Donald Trump announced the thaw.

"We're going to be taking the sanctions off, OK?" Trump told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit, referring to the CAATSA sanctions Washington dropped on Turkey's defense procurement agency in December 2020. "We don't want to sanction friends," he added, according to AFP.

And the F-35 itself? Listen carefully to the verbs. "That's a decision we're going to make," Trump said. "It's a great plane, the best plane by far, and it's certainly something we will consider." Consider. Decide. Not approve, not sell, not deliver. Six years of frozen policy just got moved to the microwave, but nobody has pressed start.

How Turkey Lost Its Stealth Jets

A quick rewind for anyone who spent 2019 doing something healthier than tracking sanctions law. Turkey was a founding industrial partner in the F-35 program. Turkish companies were slated to build an estimated 900 parts for the jet, and Ankara planned to buy around 100 F-35As. The first aircraft was even rolled out at Fort Worth in June 2018, complete with ceremony and flags.

Then Turkey went through with buying Russia's S-400 air defense system, after Washington had spent two years pushing the Patriot instead. The Pentagon's position was blunt: a Russian radar designed to hunt stealth aircraft cannot live on the same network as a stealth aircraft. When S-400 deliveries began in July 2019, the US expelled Turkey from the program within days.

In December 2020 came the second hammer: sanctions on Turkey's Presidency of Defense Industries under CAATSA, the law Congress originally wrote with Russian election interference in mind. Turkey became the first NATO ally sanctioned under it. The jets built for Turkey were eventually absorbed by the US Air Force.

The Law Is Not a Vibe

Here is where Tuesday's warm words meet cold statute. The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act explicitly prohibits transferring F-35s to Turkey unless it "no longer possesses" the S-400 system, or any equipment, materials or personnel associated with it. Congress wrote that language deliberately, and it did not include a presidential waiver.

The CAATSA sanctions were likewise codified by Congress. Trump said his cabinet, including Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent and Pete Hegseth, is working on the removal, but a clean lift runs through Capitol Hill, not through chemistry with Erdogan.

The irony everyone in Ankara knows: Turkey never actually switched the S-400 on. Much of the reportedly $2.5 billion system still sits in its boxes. Analysts told Middle East Eye the likely compromise is a deal that renders it verifiably inoperative or ships it to a third country, letting Washington certify that Turkey no longer "possesses" a working system.

There is also precedent for the administration simply plowing ahead. In late June it notified Congress of a $700 million engine sale for Turkey's KAAN fighter program, rolling straight over a hold placed by Representative Gregory Meeks. Engines, however, are the low-hanging fruit. A fifth-generation stealth jet is the whole orchard.

Congress Has Entered the Chat

Reaction on the Hill was immediate and not exactly a standing ovation. Senator John Cornyn's entire response to the news was four words long. The Hill reported that a bipartisan group of lawmakers had already written to Trump opposing any F-35 sale to Ankara before the summit even began.

Not everyone is opposed. Senator Mike Rounds, in Ankara with a congressional delegation, told CNN that a resolved S-400 question would be "good news for NATO." And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent Monday on Fox arguing the opposite, saying Turkey should get neither the F-35 nor the engines.

Erdogan, for his part, is acting like the deal is done. "Mr. Trump has also personally given us his word on this matter," he said through a translator, adding that he believed a favorable F-35 decision would emerge from the summit.

You can watch the full exchange between the two presidents below, including the moment Trump praises Turkey as "much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal."

PBS NewsHour: Trump says the US will lift Turkey sanctions and consider selling F-35s.

What Actually Changed on Tuesday

The honest answer: the politics moved, the law did not. Sanctions relief is genuinely in motion, and that alone matters for Turkey's defense industry, which has spent five years routing around SSB's blacklisting. The F-35 question remains exactly where it was on Monday, parked behind an NDAA provision that requires Turkey to give up the very missiles that started this mess.

Meanwhile Ankara has spent the interregnum hedging beautifully: new F-16 modernization kits, a Eurofighter Typhoon order from Britain, and the homegrown KAAN stealth program now fitted with American engines. If the F-35 door reopens, Turkey walks through it holding a much better hand than it had in 2019.

Watch the certification language. If the White House formally declares the S-400 gone, dismantled or exported in the coming months, this stops being a talking point and becomes a transaction. Until then, the F-35s stay exactly where Turkey's first ones ended up: somebody else's.

Sources: AFP via Turkish Minute, Associated Press via PBS News, Reuters, NOTUS, Middle East Eye, The Hill