Trump wants to restore Turkey's access to the F-35: industrial shift and NATO 3.0 signal

Ankara expelled from the F-35 in 2019 for the purchase of Russian S-400s: the Trump administration prepares its return. A major industrial and diplomatic signal ahead of the NATO summit.

The fact

According to the New York Times relayed on July 7, 2026 by Investing.com, the Trump administration is preparing to restore Turkey's access to the F-35 program, seven years after its exclusion for purchasing the Russian S-400 systems. The timeline would align with the preparations for the NATO summit in Turkey (July 2026) already covered in our thread us-defense-rearmament-thaad.

Our analysis

From an industrial standpoint, Turkey was initially a level 3 partner of the F-35 (components from Alp Aviation, TAI, Roketsan): a return would expand Lockheed Martin's (LMT) order book and increase the workload of existing US subcontractors who have absorbed the Turkish workload. Geopolitically, this is an explicit test of the "NATO 3.0" doctrine: conditioning the return on a defense spending commitment, not on resolving the S-400 issue. For Europeans (Rheinmetall, Airbus Defence), the message is ambiguous: the re-alignment of the US-Turkey weakens the margin of the thesis of an autonomous European air sovereignty (SCAF/GCAP).

To watch

Formal decision by the Department of State. Conditions imposed on Ankara regarding the S-400. Signal from Lockheed on its F-35 backlog and pace. Reactions from Greece and Cyprus. Position of the US parliament (Senate Foreign Relations Committee).