Turkey’s readmission to the F-35 program must come with a cost

Excerpt

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking forgiveness.

Last week, he asked President Trump to re-admit Turkey to the fifth generation stealth F-35 fighter jet program, from which it was booted in 2019 after acquiring a Russian air defense system that poses a significant cyber threat to NATO.

But Trump would be ill-advised to accede to Erdogan’s request.

Jonathan Schanzer is executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow.