Illustrative: a U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II, 4 July 2026. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Airman 1st Class Raymond LaChance, 158th Fighter Wing, via DVIDS (public domain).

Türkiye Already Owns Six F-35s It Cannot Take Home

Technical Summary

Türkiye is not waiting to buy the F-35. It already owns six of them, and Turkish pilots have already flown them. Six F-35A Lightning II aircraft, built and paid for by Türkiye at a cost of about 1.7 billion dollars, sit today in United States long-term storage. Türkiye itself has never taken delivery of a single one. On 7 July 2026, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, President Trump said the United States would lift its sanctions on Türkiye and would consider selling it the F-35. He called the aircraft the best plane by far. President Erdogan spoke of five jets rather than the six generally reported, and said he expected the commitment to be honoured. The signal was loud. The law underneath it did not move.

Two separate United States legal instruments sit between that announcement and any delivery. The first is the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, known as CAATSA. Section 231 sanctions were imposed in December 2020 on the Presidency of Defence Industries, Türkiye's main procurement body, over its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system. Those sanctions can be lifted by executive action. The second instrument is harder. Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, Public Law 116-92, bars the transfer of F-35 aircraft or related technology to Türkiye for as long as Türkiye holds the S-400 or related equipment. Lifting CAATSA does not touch it.

Six Türkiye-owned F-35As, worth about 1.7 billion dollars, sit in United States long-term storage. Not one can be handed over while Section 1245 stands and no certification has been signed by the Secretaries of State and Defense. ISC open-source assessment, 8 July 2026

How Türkiye Ended Up With the S-400

Türkiye's route to the S-400 began with a gap it could not otherwise fill. Ankara needed a long-range system able to intercept ballistic missiles, and its preferred choice was the United States MIM-104 Patriot. Washington would not sell the Patriot on the terms Türkiye wanted, above all the technology transfer and co-production Ankara pressed for. No comparable Western system was offered to it. Türkiye then bought the Russian S-400. From Ankara's standpoint this was not a turn towards Moscow but the only ballistic-missile interceptor actually available to it. That framing sits at the centre of the dispute. Washington treats the S-400 as an unacceptable intrusion into the F-35's stealth envelope, while Türkiye treats it as a capability it was left with no Western means of acquiring.

Analysis of Effects

Section 1245 does not simply express disapproval. It sets a test. Before any F-35 can move, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense must certify in writing, at least 90 days in advance, that Türkiye no longer possesses the S-400 and has given credible assurances that it will not accept future Russian air defence systems. No such certification has been issued. The technical objection behind the statute is specific. The S-400 pairs a 91N6E acquisition and battle-management radar in the L-band with a 92N6E engagement radar in the X-band. The L-band set supports wide-volume search and can erode the advantage a low-observable aircraft relies on, while the X-band set handles precision tracking and engagement. Operating those sensors alongside the F-35 would let an operator characterise the aircraft's radar cross-section and its electronic-warfare emissions. That risk, identified by United States defence assessments since 2019, is the reason the programme was unwound in the first place.

Even a signed certification would not put the six jets straight into service. The aircraft are Lot 10 and Lot 11 airframes, preserved in United States storage since 2019. Before any could fly operationally they would need configuration updates, pilot and cadre re-training, and reconnection to the F-35 logistics backbone, first the Autonomic Logistics Information System and now its replacement, the Operational Data Integrated Network. Türkiye's former industrial role adds a second layer. Turkish Aerospace Industries built centre-fuselage sections and supplied engine components before 2019. That work was redistributed across other suppliers after the removal. Bringing Türkiye back into production would require full re-qualification, supply-chain re-certification, and the re-establishment of secure data links. None of that is quick.

Regional and Political Reaction

The regional reaction was immediate. Israel opposes the sale. Prime Minister Netanyahu said publicly that he was against transferring F-35s to Türkiye, and United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled a planned meeting with him on 8 July as tension over the question rose. Greece already holds an approved F-35 path of its own, so any Türkiye acquisition would feed straight into the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean balance. Inside Washington the resistance is bipartisan. Members of Congress who wrote the Section 1245 language have shown no sign of repealing it, and several have restated its intent through 2025 and into 2026.

The Pilots Who Have Already Flown Them

The ownership point has a human dimension. Turkish pilots have already flown these aircraft. In 2018, before the programme was halted, a small cadre of Turkish Air Force aviators began F-35 conversion in the United States. Major Halit Oktay flew the first Turkish F-35 sortie, on 28 August 2018 at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Major Mustafa Onur Kara flew second and went on to serve as an F-35 instructor pilot. Oktay and Kara were the pioneering Turkish F-35 aircrew, and the aircraft they flew are the same airframes now in storage. Both came from an F-16 background, the same fast-jet lineage that produced the squadrons listed below.

The training ran under the United States Air Force 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, part of the 56th Fighter Wing, which reactivated the unit specifically for Turkish F-35 conversion. Turkish instructors served inside that squadron for a period. Reporting from 2018 and 2019 put the Turkish contingent at more than forty pilots and maintainers across Luke and Eglin Air Force Bases before the effort was wound down. No full public list of names exists, and United States officials cited privacy and operational security. The jets they flew, tail-coded in the AT-01 series and wearing Turkish markings, are the same batch now held in long-term storage. Türkiye did not just pay for these aircraft. Its aircrew were already qualifying on them.

Turkish F-16 Squadrons That Could Lead an F-35 Transition

If the six jets are ever released, Türkiye will not convert from a standing start. It fields an experienced F-16 force, and the units most likely to lead a fifth-generation transition are its strongest fighter-bomber, SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences) and NATO-facing squadrons. There is no reliable official public ranking of Turkish Air Force squadrons, so the assessment below is by mission reputation and operational significance, drawn from open-source unit listings such as F-16.net, NATO Tiger Association records and Defence Turkey, which describes 161 Filo as one of the air force’s premier fighter-bomber units.

By capability, the standout roles break down as follows:

• Strike and fighter-bomber: 161 Filo.
• SEAD: 151 Filo, with 191 Filo and 152 Filo also central.
• Frontline combat-exposed: 181 Filo.
• NATO prestige and Tiger Meet profile: 192 Filo.
• Tactics and training influence: 132 Filo.
• Most strategically placed: 152 Filo at Incirlik.

The point for NATO is that these are the crews and the institutional knowledge a fifth-generation force would inherit. A transition would concentrate first on the fighter-bomber and SEAD squadrons, where F-35 sensor fusion and low-observable access add the most, before spreading across the wider force.

Data Gaps

Several load-bearing facts remain open. There is no published waiver, executive order, or draft amendment giving effect to the sanctions decision. No Section 1245 certification has been signed or laid before Congress. The numbers do not fully reconcile either. Reporting records six airframes built and paid for, yet President Erdogan referred publicly to five, and open sources do not explain the difference. The disposition is unsettled as well, because reporting in 2020 indicated the United States Air Force would absorb the Turkish-built jets, so whether all six remain earmarked for Türkiye is an open question. The disposition of the six stored airframes is unchanged, and the 1.7 billion dollar figure traces to Congressional Research Service material cited in current reporting rather than a fresh audited number. Whether Türkiye would physically divest, relocate, or merely deactivate the S-400 has not been stated. Each of these gaps sits between the announcement and an actual aircraft on a Türkiye flight line.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product. This article is also available in Turkish: Türkçe.