Erdoğan says Turkey will recoup money paid to US for F-35 jets

Duvar English - Reuters

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he believed Turkey and the United States will make progress in talks for the sale of F-16 fighter jets and that Ankara will recoup $1.4 billion it paid for F-35s it is blocked from buying.

Erdoğan said at the weekend that the United States had offered to sell Turkey the F-16s in return for Ankara's downpayment on the more advanced F-35s, which Washington blocked after Turkey bought Russian missile defenses.

Washington, which also imposed sanctions in December on Turkey's defense industry, said it had made no financing offer to its NATO ally.

"We will get this $1.4 billion of ours one way or another," Erdoğan told reporters on a return flight from Nigeria, adding the Turkish and U.S. defense ministers would discuss the issue.

"I believe we will make progress. We will of course talk about this with [U.S. President Joe] Biden at the G20 meeting in Rome."

Reuters reported earlier this month that Turkey asked to buy 40 Lockheed Martin-made F-16 fighter jets and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes.

Asked about the talks on the issue, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tanju Bilgiç said that Turkey and the United States were discussing possibly using the payment for the F-35s to finance Ankara's F-16 purchase.

"The options for us are simple: we will either return to the [F-35] program, get the planes, or they will refund our money. In this framework, using the money we paid for the F-35s for the modernization of the F-16s is on the agenda," Bilgiç said.

The decades-old alliance between Ankara and Washington has been seriously strained in the past five years over policy differences on Syria, Turkey's Russian S-400 missile defense purchase, tensions in the eastern Mediterranean and human rights.

Ankara has said it hopes for better ties under the new U.S. administration, but talks between Erdoğan and Biden have so far yielded little progress.