Trump mustn’t trust Turkey strongman Recep Erdogan with our F-35 jets

Erdogan has spent the better part of a decade proving he can't be trusted with American hardware. He bought a Russian S-400 missile system in 2019, the exact kind of platform that's designed to hunt stealth aircraft like the F-35, and got bounced from the F-35 program for it. That wasn't a misunderstanding. It was Erdogan choosing Moscow over NATO with his eyes open. Now the same country is supposedly back in line for the jets, and the case for it seems to rest almost entirely on the personal chemistry between two leaders who like each other.

That's not a strategy. Personal rapport is nice, but it's not a substitute for a track record, and Erdogan's track record includes buying Russian air defense, jailing journalists and political rivals by the thousands, and playing both sides of the Ukraine war depending on which day it is. Handing him F-35s means handing him access to the most sensitive stealth technology America has, sitting inside a country that still keeps a Russian missile system on its own soil. If the S-400 stays, the technical risk to the jet's signature doesn't go away just because Trump and Erdogan get along.

None of this means Turkey should be frozen out forever. It's a NATO member, it sits on real estate that matters for the alliance, and there are legitimate reasons to want it inside the tent rather than drifting further toward Russia. But that argument has to be made on hard conditions, not vibes. The S-400 has to actually go, not just get quietly parked. Erdogan has to show it in deeds, not dinners. Trusting him because the two men get along is exactly the kind of soft-headed thinking that got Ankara kicked out of the program in the first place.