Why Washington dropped Turkey from the F-35 programme
A retrospective on the 17 July 2019 decision that followed Ankara's receipt of Russian S-400 missile systems.
What happened to Turkey's place in the F-35 programme as of 18 July 2019? It had just been removed. On 17 July 2019 the United States took NATO ally Turkey out of the Joint Strike Fighter programme, a decision reported the day before the date covered here.
The move followed Turkey's acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile system. Ankara had received the first shipment of the system from Russia on 12 July 2019, defying calls from the United States and NATO to cancel the deal.
Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35 Lightning II jets. With its removal from the programme, that plan was set aside.
The sequence was short: delivery of the Russian system on 12 July, then the American decision five days later, on 17 July. By 18 July 2019, the dispute between two NATO allies over the S-400 had moved from warnings to a concrete penalty.
