Netanyahu Runs a Media Blitz to Keep Turkey Out of the F-35 Program

Israel is running an active campaign to stop a NATO ally from getting American fighter jets it already paid for.

Within 72 hours of last month's NATO summit in Ankara, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on three American television networks to argue that Turkey cannot be trusted with F-35s. President Trump had just told reporters at the summit he would lift CAATSA sanctions on Turkey and was "certainly" considering restoring its access to the fighter jet program, frozen since 2019.

Netanyahu's public case rests on a specific legal concept: Israel's "qualitative military edge," a provision written into U.S. law that bars Washington from selling weapons to Middle Eastern states if those weapons would put their military capabilities on par with Israel's. Netanyahu has said Turkish F-35s would "destroy the power balance" in the region.

A doctrine never applied to a NATO ally

What makes this notable is that the qualitative military edge standard has never been formally applied to Turkey, according to Responsible Statecraft's reporting. Turkey is not an adversary state under U.S. law. It is a treaty member of NATO. Israel is nonetheless asking Washington to treat an allied country's weapons purchases as a threat to Israeli regional primacy, effectively asking the U.S. defense bureaucracy to extend a doctrine built for Iran or Iraq onto one of its own alliance partners.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar also moved to reframe remarks made by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Asked on CNN Türk whether Turkey was among Israel's targets, Fidan said Israel had become "a problem for the world" and that, given its current policies, "these men have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear." Sa'ar cast the statement as a dehumanizing attack on Jews and a call for Israel's erasure, a framing Netanyahu then amplified on Fox News. The dispute over what Fidan actually meant remains contested, but the pattern of Israeli officials converting a Turkish minister's criticism of Israeli government policy into an existential threat narrative fits a familiar playbook for shaping U.S. media coverage.

Turkey's long, expensive detour

Turkey's F-35 troubles trace back to its 2019 purchase of Russia's S-400 missile defense system, a decision rooted in a decade of failed negotiations with Washington, the withdrawal of U.S. and German Patriot batteries from Turkish soil in the winter of 2015-2016, and the diplomatic rupture that followed the 2016 coup attempt against President Erdogan. Ankara had already paid roughly $1.5 billion into the F-35 program before being expelled. It is the only participant expelled after paying in, and the six aircraft it financed were never delivered.

Erdogan turned the S-400 purchase into a symbol of Turkish strategic independence, which has made reversing course politically costly even as domestic critics call the decision a costly stubborn mistake that left Turkey flying an aging F-16 fleet.

A related sign of momentum: a separate $700 million sale of American engines for Turkey's domestic KAAN fighter jet cleared congressional review in July despite organized opposition, and Ankara is reportedly exploring transferring its S-400 batteries to a Gulf state, a step Washington has long demanded.

Whether Trump follows through on restoring F-35 access will now test something larger than one arms deal: whether Israel's claim to unmatched regional military superiority can override American policy toward one of its own NATO allies.