Say what you will about President Jimmy Carter, but even America’s most progressive president until Barack Obama and Joe Biden understood you do not arm enemies. After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, he canceled the sale of Grumman F-14 Tomcats, refusing to deliver those still in production or to return the jets and Iranian pilots training in the United States.
Biden has no such sense. The U.S. may define Turkey as an ally out of diplomatic nicety, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s full-throated anti-Americanism, embrace of Hamas, willingness to extort NATO over Sweden and Finland’s membership, efforts to help Russia evade sanctions, ethnic cleansing of Kurdish districts in Syria, persistent bombing of Iraq, challenges to Cypriot unity and waters, irredentist claims toward Greece, attacks on protesters in Washington, and logistical support for the Islamic State group are all reasons that individually should disqualify Turkey from receiving F-16s, let alone the next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Yet that is exactly what the Biden administration now proposes doing. Lena Argiri, Washington correspondent for the Greek daily Kathimerini, reports that during their visit to Ankara, Turkey, in early July, Celeste Wallander, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and Michael Carpenter, special adviser to the president and senior director for Europe at the National Security Council, discussed reviving the F-35 deal with their Turkish counterparts.
In exchange for reentering the F-35 program, the Biden team demands Turkey hand over to the U.S. the Russian S-400s that led the Trump administration to expel Turkey from the F-35 program. Turkey has so far refused and said it would just keep them unassembled and inside a box. The impasse may be temporary: Talks to revive the F-35 deal are on the agenda for the U.S. and Turkey when leaders and security officials meet this week on the sideline of the United Nations General Assembly.
The most dangerous time in foreign and defense policy is when an administration becomes lame duck. Presidents who face no election feel unencumbered by accountability. Too many ambassadors and assistant secretaries, meanwhile, see furthering commercial deals as an inside track to beginning a second career with energy and defense companies. Such trading on access is unethical and hard to prove, but it happens frequently. Just ask almost any ambassador to Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
Call it what it has become: the zombie deal, rising from the dead. Rather than sell Turkey the F-35s, the Biden team might as well just give the aircraft to Russia and China and skip the middleman. Reviving the F-35 deal means officials are working either for personal gain or simply to advance bad policy. The Biden team is already more reckless than most, but Biden’s own deterioration leaves room for his staffers to pursue indefensible policies. If there is one issue about which there should be bipartisan consensus in Washington, it is that Erdogan’s Turkey is a force for instability throughout the region and does not deserve F-35s.
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The White House and the Defense Department have lied to Congress. Should members of either party let them get away with it, expect the lies to accumulate among whoever takes the helm in January 2025. Congress must take its oversight seriously.
It is time to pass a law banning any aircraft or spare parts to Turkey. The White House no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. Strategically, there is no risk. Finland, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece inside NATO and Cyprus outside can take up the defensive mantle on which Turkey cannot be trusted.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.