Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Donald Trump at the airport in Ankara, which heads of state generally do not do. There were cannons. There were soldiers on horseback. Jets flew overhead trailing red, white, and blue smoke. Then the two men sat down at the presidential palace in Ankara and Trump, asked about the sanctions his own administration imposed on Turkey, said this: “We don’t want to sanction friends.”
The sanctions came down in December 2020, from Trump’s own White House, on Trump’s own watch, after Turkey bought a Russian air defense system built to hunt the exact American stealth fighter Ankara wanted to buy. Nothing about the S-400 has changed since. What changed is that Erdogan sent horses to the airport.
Trump went further. Turkey, he said, has been more loyal than other U.S. allies. He said this on a trip where he singled out Britain, France, Germany, and Italy for insufficient enthusiasm about his war on Iran, complained that the alliance had not treated him well, and declined to rule out withdrawing more American troops from Europe.
Loyalty, in this formulation, has nothing to do with treaties, democracy or shared interest. It means Erdogan was nice to him.
On the F-35 itself, Trump was slipperier. A sale was “certainly something we will consider.” By the conclusion of the Ankara NATO summit, he had backed up further, saying he hadn’t made up his mind but was inclined to say yes, because Erdogan has helped in so many ways (as has China, he added).
Erdogan is telling a different story. He says Trump gave him his word personally , and that six jets were promised. Only one of these men can be describing something real, and only one of them is bound by American law.
Here is the thing the White House keeps forgetting to mention. In 2019, after Turkey took delivery of the S-400, Congress wrote Turkey’s exclusion from the F-35 program into statute. Section 1245 of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act bars the transfer of any F-35 to Turkey until Ankara “no longer possesses” the S-400—or any equipment, materials, or personnel connected to it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth must personally certify that in writing, to Congress, 90 days before a single aircraft moves.
Congress attached no presidential waiver. There is no national security exception, no emergency authority, no discretion to interpret. And Trump signed it. He signed the sanctions law too, or rather, he was rolled by it. Trump opposed CAATSA in 2017; Congress passed it with margins so large that a veto was pointless. His own first-term officials then had to talk him into using it. Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) entire public response to the Ankara announcement was to post the text of Section 1245 and, separately, to say he hoped the reporting was wrong.
So, when you read that Congress will stop this sale, understand what that actually means, because it does not mean what people think.
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) has asked House leaders to introduce a joint resolution of disapproval. A joint resolution is a bill. Trump vetoes it. Overriding takes two-thirds of both chambers, and two-thirds does not exist, because the opposition is already leaking. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), in Ankara with a congressional delegation, said resolving the S-400 would be good news for NATO. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) called the briefings on the subject promising.
Congress’s real leverage is not a vote. It is a piece of paper with two signatures on it. Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio have to sign that certification. They have to attest, as a matter of fact and under their own names, that Turkey no longer possesses a weapons system that Turkey currently possesses. Reports indicate Turkey is actively seeking Russia’s consent to offload the S-400 systems to a Gulf country like Qatar or the UAE to clear this exact legal hurdle though nothing is agreed and Russia attaches conditions to what it sells. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) calls relocation a nonstarter. Warehousing the thing goes against the plain text. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put it without ornament: while Turkey holds the S-400s, the sale is illegal .
Imagine Hegseth and Rubio telling this president no. And there’s already a precedent. Last month, with the sanctions still in force, the administration notified Congress that it was proceeding with the sale of F110 engines for Turkey’s homegrown KAAN fighter. Nobody stopped it. Almost nobody noticed.
Turkey is a NATO ally. Six of its F-35s sit in an Arizona hangar, and roughly $1.7 billion of its money sits in American hands. The S-400s were never integrated into Turkish air defenses; much of the hardware is still in shipping containers. If Ankara genuinely and verifiably gives them up—and inspectors confirm it—then the law works exactly as designed and Turkey gets its jets.
That is not what is happening. What is happening is that a president is promising a foreign leader an outcome that United States law forbids, on the basis of nothing but the warmth of the reception. Meanwhile human rights in Turkey go unmentioned in Washington.
If Hegseth and Rubio sign a certification to fit a promise rather than a fact, the damage will not be to the F-35 program. Stealth technology will survive. What will not survive is the idea that Congress can write a sentence, get a president’s signature on it, and expect the sentence to mean something afterward.
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