Turkey eyes F110 fighter jet engines as Trump visits Ankara

The July 7-8 summit, hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will bring together the leaders of the 32 member states of the military alliance.

Last month, Trump promised to make Erdogan “very happy” when asked if Turkey was seeking F110 jet engines and readmitted into the F-35 fighter jet program.

Analysts said that would likely mean releasing fighter jet engines that Turkey wants to use in its flagship KAAN stealth fighter project.

“This will probably be the green light for the F110 GE engines of the KAAN fighter jet, around forty of them.

“There were obstacles to this supply and it is very likely that they will now be removed,” Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based think tank Edam, told AFP.

“Turkey has produced a few prototypes that fly with the F110 engine, but it is waiting for the supply of additional engines to increase the number of KAAN platforms,” he said.

KAAN is a twin-engine stealth fighter developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) to replace the Turkish Air Force’s F-16 fleet as Ankara seeks to join the exclusive club of countries producing fifth-generation fighter jets, including the United States, China and Russia.

Although Turkey will eventually equip the fighter with its own domestically produced engine – the F110s do not have stealth capability – this project is still in the preliminary design phase, Defense Minister Yasar Guler said in September.

“Turkey received a first batch of 10 F110s in September and negotiations with the US government to acquire 80 more are ‘ongoing’,” he said.

Indigenous defense systems

However, this was delayed by the lack of political authorization related to Turkey’s 2017 acquisition of a Russian S-400 missile defense system, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in September.

Furious, Washington kicked Turkey out of its F-35 fighter jet program in 2019 and imposed CAATSA sanctions a year later, hampering Turkish defense projects and worsening ties.

“The CAATSA issue must be resolved. The United States must take action on both the F-35 and the KAAN engines.

“The KAAN engines are currently awaiting approval from the US Congress,” Fidan said, his remarks raising eyebrows at home as Turkey had said the KAAN would be produced entirely domestically.

Ankara’s exclusion of the F-35 forced it to refocus on self-sufficiency.

“Some argue that we should not buy F-35s and invest that money in our own fifth-generation fighter jet program. And that is exactly what is happening with President Trump’s decision to export jet engines,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara.

“Without these engines, Turkey cannot produce the KAAN jet,” Unluhisarcikli said.

F-35 standoff continues

“With the KAAN delivery date several years away, only Indonesia has placed an order, signing a $10 billion contract to purchase 48 fighters, although the NATO summit may generate more interest,” Ulgen said.

“In view of the failure of the German-French FCAS initiative, there could be some interest. Spain could potentially become a partner and there could be interest from the Gulf countries as well… But there are still other obstacles to overcome for this offer to become a credible offer on the international stage,” he said.

Experts expected little progress in the lingering F-35 dispute: For Congress to lift CAATSA sanctions, Ankara would have to get rid of the S-400 — but selling it to a third country would require Moscow’s approval, and returning it to the Russians was not on the cards.

“The US administration might like to… leave this issue behind and sell F-35s to Turkey, but that will come back to Congress and it will not be easy to change Congress’s decision,” said Professor Mustafa Aydin, an international relations expert at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

However, Matthew Bryza, a retired U.S. envoy and former senior White House and State Department official, said Trump could act to resolve the issue because the F-35 was an executive decision that he could easily reverse.

“President Trump can certainly declare that the conflict between the S-400s and the F-35s is over.

“It’s the CAATSA sanctions that require Congressional action. His ability to convince Congress to do that depends on how much political capital he’s willing to spend,” he told AFP, of a move that could be “politically costly in the run-up to the midterm elections” due to Turkey’s opponents in the Greek and Armenian diaspora.