The Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC) has filed a petition to the U.S. Congress against possible attempts to include Türkiye in the F-35 program again, from which it has been excluded in 2019.
The petition was sent as a letter to four Senators and Representatives, who are also members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after it was revealed that U.S. officials had proposed a deal to Turkish officials in July that would include Türkiye in the program if they agreed to the U.S. taking control of the Russian S-400 missile defense system Türkiye had acquired. According to the proposal, the missile system would be transferred to the U.S. İncirlik Airbase, located in southeastern Türkiye, and placed under total U.S. control, as the Greek Kathimerini newspaper reported. Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Pentagon official, stated that the development of “additional areas for increased partnership” and the goals of “increasing longstanding defense ties” were also discussed between the two sides.
Although Türkiye had joined the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program (JSF) in 2007 along with other NATO allies, it was removed from the program by Washington in 2019 following the Turkish government’s purchase of the Russian S-400s, posing a risk to its fifth-generation warplanes and NATO’s broader defense systems. The deal, worth $2.5 billion, was brokered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin for the S-400 missile system, despite warnings from the United States and other NATO allies. After the purchase, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Turkey’s military procurement agency as punishment under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which mandates penalties for transactions deemed harmful to U.S. interests.
The United States' new proposal to Türkiye infuriated the Greek lobby, leading the HALC to launch a petition. In the petition, Türkiye is accused of blackmailing NATO in the dispute over Sweden and Finland's membership in the alliance, deepening collaboration and cooperation in strategic sectors with Russia, sponsoring and sheltering Hamas, violating Greek airspace with Turkish F-16s in the Aegean, and using American weapons against American allies and interests, including Greece, Cyprus, Syrian Kurds, and Armenians in Artsakh. The letter also argued that allowing Türkiye back into the F-35 program and granting its request to buy engines for its domestically-produced military jets would mean overlooking Türkiye’s violations of U.S. interests. The petition claimed that Türkiye is unreliable with advanced American military technology and cannot be rewarded with F-35s or jet engines as it would pose a national security risk to the U.S. and jeopardize its other alliances. The HALC urged Congress to reject Turkish requests for F-35s, GE Aerospace engines, and any further defense articles as long as Türkiye maintains its current policies. The petition concluded by stating that Türkiye has much to prove to the U.S. before it can be readmitted to the program.