Here is the thing that became possible this week that was not possible before: a NATO member expelled from the alliance's flagship fighter programme now has a credible path back into it. Meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, US President Donald Trump said Washington will lift the CAATSA sanctions on Turkey and will consider selling it F-35 jets, according to Al-Monitor.

The announcement came at the top of a two-day NATO summit. Trump arrived Tuesday in Ankara to a ceremonial welcome — military salutes and a flyover — and opened the visit with a bilateral sit-down with Erdoğan, The Hill reported. A possible F-35 sale was expected to be on that agenda, and it was.

Why this matters

CAATSA — the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act — is the US law under which Washington penalised Ankara in 2020 for buying the Russian S-400 air-defence system. The same dispute got Turkey thrown out of the F-35 programme, in which it had been both a buyer and a manufacturing partner. Lifting the sanctions and reopening the jet question therefore does two things at once: it removes a standing punishment and dangles the reward that punishment had blocked.

Turkey's state agency framed it as a clean win, reporting that Trump said the US would lift sanctions on Türkiye as he met Erdoğan, per Anadolu Ajansı.

The bigger picture

Read through the alliance lens, this is a sanctions-for-alignment bargain. The clever part, if it holds, is that it converts a five-year irritant on NATO's south-eastern flank into leverage: the world's second-largest army in the alliance gets pulled back toward Western kit and away from the Russian systems that triggered the rupture in the first place.

Hypothesis: the F-35 offer is conditioned, formally or informally, on Ankara sidelining or surrendering its S-400s — the original CAATSA trigger. Supporting this: the sanctions and the F-35 expulsion both flowed from the same S-400 purchase, so it is hard to see how the jets return while the Russian system stays fully operational. Against this: none of the cited reports states any such condition, and Trump's language, as reported, was that the US would merely consider a sale — a deliberate step short of a signed contract. Treat the linkage as informed interpretation, not established fact.

What was actually announced is a presidential statement of intent, not a completed deal. Lifting CAATSA designations and approving an F-35 export both run through processes the source reporting does not describe as finished.

The honest caveats

  • Sequencing is unclear: the sources confirm Trump's stated intent to lift sanctions, but not when, how, or against what Turkish commitment.
  • The F-35 is described as under consideration, not sold — as Devdiscourse noted in summarising the moves.
  • The fate of the S-400 — the system that caused the whole dispute — is not addressed in any of the cited reports.
  • Congress: CAATSA is a statute, and the reporting does not say whether lawmakers signed off on unwinding designations tied to it.

What this unlocks next

If the sanctions relief is formalised, it reopens Turkey's access to the Western defence-industrial base after years of drift, and it removes one of the most public sources of friction between Washington and Ankara — a point Apa.az carried in reporting Trump's remarks.

What to watch

  1. A written framework or executive action actually removing the CAATSA designations — not just the verbal pledge made in Ankara.
  2. Any stated condition on the S-400: retirement, storage, or a face-saving compromise.
  3. Whether the F-35 moves from "consider" to a formal Letter of Offer and Acceptance, and on what numbers.
  4. The reaction in Washington, where CAATSA's congressional authors may test how far a president can unwind sanctions the law was written to compel.