Trump Tells Erdogan He Will Lift CAATSA Sanctions on Turkey, Reopening the Door to F-35 Sales
At a NATO summit in Ankara, President Trump said he would lift CAATSA sanctions on Turkey and that he had "no problem" selling F-35s, reversing a five-year rupture in the alliance over the S-400 purchase.
President Donald Trump told reporters in Ankara on 7 July 2026 that he intends to lift the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) penalties imposed on Turkey, a move that would clear the legal path for the re-sale of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to a NATO ally ejected from the programme five years ago. Speaking to the press during a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the margins of the NATO summit, Trump said: "We will make a decision. I think a lot of people — and I can say that many of the people sitting in this room agree — we will lift the CAATSA sanctions." Separately, in remarks captured by Turkish state media and relayed through Telegram channels covering the visit, the US president told Erdogan directly that he had "no problem in selling the F-35" to Turkey. Erdogan, for his part, said the original 2019 commitment stood at five aircraft and claimed Trump had renewed that word: "We had received a commitment for five aircraft, and President Trump has also given his word on this matter. President Trump always stands by his word."
The exchange marks the most concrete US step yet toward reversing a 2019 decision by the first Trump administration to remove Turkey from the F-35 programme after Ankara took delivery of the Russian S-400 Triumf air-defence system. CAATSA, passed by Congress in 2017, mandates sanctions on any entity that conducts significant transactions with Russia's defence and intelligence sectors. Turkey, a NATO founder and the alliance's second-largest standing army, became the only alliance member ever sanctioned under the statute, a fact that has rankled Ankara for years and that Turkish officials have regularly framed as a humiliation imposed on a frontline partner.
The question now is not whether Trump wants the sale to go through. The transcript of his remarks leaves little doubt. It is whether Congress will let him. CAATSA sanctions can only be waived or terminated through specific statutory mechanisms, and a non-trivial cross-section of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle has historically opposed any restoration of the F-35 relationship while the S-400s remain operational on Turkish soil. The administration can issue a presidential waiver under the National Interest Waiver authority inside CAATSA Section 231, but Congress retains the ability to block the underlying F-35 transfer through the annual defence authorisation and appropriations process, where the Lockheed Martin programme enjoys a well-organised industrial constituency. The legal landscape has not changed. The political landscape around it has.
The counter-narrative coming out of Ankara is calibrated and worth taking seriously. Turkish officials, including Erdogan himself, now argue that the strategic landscape has shifted enough to justify a reset. They point to the war in Ukraine, the deepening energy cooperation between Turkey and Russia, and Turkey's role as a logistical hub for both Western and Russian grain and energy flows. Ankara's underlying claim is that it is a NATO member doing NATO work in the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Caucasus, and that the S-400 episode, whatever the merits of the original decision, has been allowed to fester long past the point of usefulness. Turkey also makes the implicit case that a country operating the S-400 is not in fact incompatible with operating the F-35 if the two systems are physically and electronically segregated, an arrangement that Turkish engineers have offered to demonstrate. Whether the US Air Force and Lockheed Martin accept that argument turns on technical risk assessments that the public does not yet have.
The structural frame is that the United States is making tactical concessions to a middle-weight ally whose cooperation it needs in a war it is not directly fighting. The original F-35 expulsion was always a coercion strategy. It was meant to force Turkey to choose between a Western fifth-generation fighter and a Russian air-defence system, and to deliver a deterrent signal to other NATO members contemplating similar hedges. Five years on, the coercion has not worked. The S-400s are still in Turkish service. Turkey has not pivoted into the Russian orbit. It has, instead, used the episode to deepen its own defence industry, including the KAAN fifth-generation programme, and to position itself as a more autonomous pole inside NATO. The Trump administration appears to have concluded that the cost of holding the line outweighs the cost of letting it go, and it is willing to do a deal.
The stakes are concrete on both sides. For Ankara, the return of the F-35 conversation would restore a relationship with Washington that frayed badly over S-400s, Eastern Mediterranean gas disputes, and Turkish operations against Kurdish groups in Syria. It would also be a personal political win for Erdogan, who can present the outcome as vindication. For the United States, the question is what it actually buys. Turkey hosts Incirlik, a forward operating base used in counter-ISIS operations and in the past for nuclear weapons storage. Turkey controls the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Turkey brokers the Black Sea grain corridor. None of that changes with the S-400, but the credibility of US-led export controls on advanced weapons does. The next time Washington tries to coerce a partner out of a Russian or Chinese defence purchase, the precedent set in Ankara will be sitting on the table.
There are real questions the public record does not yet answer. The sources do not specify whether Trump is committing to lift the CAATSA sanctions by executive action, by signing a waiver, or by asking Congress to repeal the relevant provisions. They do not say whether the S-400 question is being quietly decoupled from the F-35 question, or whether the Turkish offer of physical and electronic segregation has been formally assessed. They do not say what price, if any, Turkey is being asked to pay in return. Reporters in the room observed Trump describing Erdogan as a friend whose work he admires, language that is consistent with a deal in motion but not with the deal itself. The headline is clear. The substance, including the specific legal mechanism and any side commitments, will emerge in the days after the summit closes.
Desk note: Monexus framed Trump's announcement as the reversal of a five-year-old coercion strategy rather than a simple sale. The wire coverage in circulation at press time emphasised the optics of the Erdogan meeting; this piece foregrounds the legal architecture around CAATSA and the precedent the move sets for US export-control credibility with the rest of NATO.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/ClashReport/
- https://t.me/ClashReport/
- https://t.me/ClashReport/
- https://t.me/ClashReport/
- https://t.me/englishabuali/
- https://t.me/abualiexpress/
- https://t.me/rnintel/