NextFin News - Turkey is using next week’s NATO summit in Ankara to press for a defense deal with Washington that could move on two tracks at once: an export of more than $700 million in F-110 jet engines and, more ambitiously, a reopening of the long-frozen F-35 conversation. President Donald Trump is expected to attend the July 7-8 summit and meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines, giving Ankara a rare chance to turn personal rapport into concrete policy.
That is the central tension in the story. Trump has already said he is going to Turkey “out of respect” for Erdogan and suggested he may do something that will “make him very happy.” Erdogan, in turn, is trying to convert that goodwill into a tangible defense gain that would strengthen Turkey’s domestic fighter program and potentially soften a rift that has lingered since Washington removed Turkey from the F-35 program in 2019 after Ankara bought Russian S-400 missile defense systems.
The summit is not just a diplomatic photo opportunity. It is happening as Turkey seeks to show it is still a core NATO partner even while remaining one of the alliance’s most awkward members. Ankara is tightening security, showcasing its military posture, and hoping that its host role can produce more than symbolism. The stakes are high because any deal on jet engines or fighter jets would ripple through Congress, defense procurement, and NATO politics all at once.
Trump’s travel also carries a historical note: he would be the first U.S. president to visit Turkey since Barack Obama in 2015. That gap reflects how uneven the relationship became under Joe Biden, who kept Erdogan at arm’s length. Under Trump, by contrast, the bilateral tone has warmed quickly. The Justice Department dropped the major case against Halkbank earlier this year, Trump has praised Erdogan repeatedly, and the two leaders have held frequent calls on Syria, Gaza and the wider Middle East.
The immediate policy question is narrower than the geopolitical backdrop. Turkey wants the F-110 engines for its KAAN fighter, and the State Department has already taken a step toward that sale by notifying lawmakers that it plans to bypass congressional opposition to more than $700 million of engine exports to Ankara. If that survives political resistance, it would be a concrete industrial win for Turkey. If Trump also pushes the F-35 issue further, the summit could become the clearest sign yet of a possible U.S.-Turkey reset. But the legal and political barriers are still there, and they are still substantial.
In other words, Erdogan is not asking for a promise. He is asking for momentum. And Trump has shown enough openness to suggest that Ankara may get it, even if a final deal remains a long way off.
Why The Engine Sale Matters More Than The Headline
The F-110 engine sale is the more immediate and more realistic part of Turkey’s ask, which is why it matters most for this summit. The engines would power the KAAN, Turkey’s domestically produced fighter program, and the transaction would help Ankara reduce dependence on foreign suppliers that can be constrained by sanctions, export controls or political disputes. That makes the sale more than a procurement item. It is a test of whether Turkey can build a self-reliant defense-industrial base while still relying on Western components.
The size of the sale also matters. More than $700 million is not a symbolic order. It is large enough to signal that Washington is willing to keep parts of the defense relationship open even as other parts remain frozen. Because the State Department has already moved to notify lawmakers, the issue is not hypothetical. The administration is actively trying to clear one channel of exports before the summit begins.
“Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I’m going to probably do something that’s going to make him very happy,” Trump said when asked whether he was taking a “big gift bag” for Erdogan.
That kind of language matters in diplomatic markets because it implies optionality. Trump is not specifying the gift, but he is making clear that the summit may produce a concrete defense-related gesture. For Turkey, even a partial win on engines would be useful because it would show that Ankara can still get something material from Washington despite years of friction.
The broader strategic question is whether that material win can be detached from the more controversial F-35 issue. In practice, the answer is not fully yes. The two are linked because they both sit inside the same trust problem: if Washington still worries about Russian access through the S-400, then every Turkish defense request is filtered through the same security lens. That is why the engine deal could be easier to move, but not necessarily enough to reset the relationship on its own.
Why The F-35 Still Blocks A Full Reset
The F-35 remains the hard wall in the relationship. Turkey was removed from the program in 2019 after purchasing the Russian S-400 system, and U.S. officials have long worried that the Russian radar could gather information on the stealth aircraft’s capabilities. That concern is not technical trivia. It is the reason the issue has stayed politically radioactive in Washington, even when the White House has signaled flexibility.
Vice President JD Vance said the administration is exploring ways to sell the aircraft to Turkey, but also stressed that any sale would have to comply with U.S. law. That is the key phrase. It tells you that the White House may be open to a pathway, but it does not remove the statutory and congressional barriers that have kept the program closed for years. In practical terms, Trump can create momentum; he cannot by himself erase the legal problem.
“It has often been pointed out he seems to have better relationships with adversaries and autocrats, and he certainly says nicer things about them than with allies,” said Philip Gordon, now at the Brookings Institution.
That comment captures why Erdogan is pressing his advantage now. Trump’s foreign-policy style favors personal ties and direct bargaining. Erdogan is betting that this matters more than institutional suspicion. If that bet works, Washington may at least reopen the process. If it fails, the summit will still deliver warmer rhetoric without changing the actual defense architecture.
There is also a political dimension at home in the United States. Bipartisan resistance to a Turkish F-35 sale has remained strong because the S-400 issue has not been resolved. That means any presidential green light would almost certainly face a fight in Congress. The White House can ask. Lawmakers can still block. That is why the F-35 discussion is the biggest headline and the least likely immediate deliverable.
The Relationship Is Thawing, But The Obstacles Remain Structural
The summit is taking place against a broader thaw in U.S.-Turkey ties, and that thaw helps explain why the current moment looks different from the Biden years. Trump has repeatedly praised Erdogan as a strong leader and a friend. Erdogan, in turn, has made clear that he sees Trump as a more open counterpart than Biden. The result is a diplomatic channel that is unusually personal, unusually fast, and unusually opaque.
But the underlying barriers are not personal. They are structural. Turkey still sits inside NATO while relying on a Russian-made air-defense system that Washington considers incompatible with sensitive Western aircraft. That is the core contradiction. Until it is solved, the relationship can improve at the margins without fully normalizing.
Other signs of thaw do not erase that contradiction, though they do make the summit more interesting. The Halkbank case was dropped earlier this year, suggesting a softer U.S. posture on at least one major point of friction. The two leaders have also kept up calls on Syria, Gaza and regional security. Erdogan has been part of Trump’s broader Middle East diplomacy. Each of those steps makes a defense announcement more plausible, but none of them solves the S-400 issue that sits behind the F-35 dispute.
The important takeaway is that Turkey is no longer merely asking for political understanding. It is asking for access, hardware and a policy shift that would carry industrial consequences at home. That is a more concrete ask than the kind of rhetoric that often surrounds NATO summits. It is also why the summit should be read as a bargaining event, not just a ceremonial one.
What To Watch At The Summit
The immediate watchpoint is the Erdogan-Trump bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the July 7-8 summit. If the administration announces movement on the engine sale, that would be the first concrete sign that the bilateral thaw is becoming operational. If Trump also says the F-35 issue is under discussion, the political stakes in Washington rise immediately, even if the practical path remains unclear.
After that, the key question is whether the U.S. can maintain congressional support for any export decision. The more ambitious the deal, the more likely it is to encounter resistance. That is especially true for the F-35, where the legal and security objections are already well known. If the engines move and the fighter question does not, Ankara will still have achieved a partial win. If neither moves, the summit will have produced warm language but little else.
For NATO, the significance is larger than one bilateral transaction. A meaningful U.S.-Turkey defense deal would signal that the alliance’s internal fractures can still be managed through leader-level diplomacy, even when formal institutions lag behind. But if the summit ends with promises that run ahead of the law, it will reinforce the opposite lesson: that personality can ease tensions, yet still fail to resolve them.
The likely outcome sits somewhere in the middle. Turkey may get a tangible step on engines and a fresh conversation on the F-35. A full reset would require something more difficult: a resolution of the S-400 problem that has defined the rupture since 2019.
The summit can open the door. It cannot, on its own, make the room safe.
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