Turkey eyes F110 fighter jet engines as Trump comes to town

ISTANBUL:

US President Donald Trump's visit to Ankara for the NATO summit could help secure Turkey's acquisition of dozens of fighter jet engines, but won't resolve the F-35 dispute that has soured ties, analysts say.

The July 7-8 summit, which is being hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will bring together leaders from the military alliance's 32 member states.

Last month, Trump promised to make Erdogan "very happy" when asked about Turkey looking to secure F110 jet engines and being readmitted to the F-35 fighter jet programme.

Analysts said it would likely mean freeing up fighter jet engines Turkey wants to use in its flagship KAAN stealth fighter project.

"It's likely to be the green light for the F110 GE engines for the KAAN fighter plane, about 40 of them. There had been obstacles to that supply and very possibly those are now being removed," Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based Edam think tank, told AFP.

"Turkey has produced a couple of prototypes which are flying with the F110 engine, but it has been waiting for the supply of additional engines to increase the number of KAAN platforms," he said.

KAAN is a twin-engine stealth fighter being developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) to replace the Turkish Air Force's fleet of F-16s as Ankara seeks to join the exclusive club of nations producing fifth-generation combat aircraft, notably the US, China and Russia.

Although Turkey will eventually fit the fighter with its own domestically-produced engine -- the F110s lacking stealth capability -- that project is still in the preliminary design phase, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said in September.

Turkey received a first batch of 10 F110s in September, and talks with the US government to acquire 80 more were "ongoing", he said.

Indigenous defence systems

But that's been held up by a lack of political clearance linked to Turkey's 2017 acquisition of a Russian S-400 missile defence system, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in September.

Infuriated, Washington expelled Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet programme in 2019 and imposed CAATSA sanctions a year later, hampering Turkish defence projects and souring ties.

"The CAATSA issue must be resolved. The US needs to take steps both regarding the F-35 and the engines for KAAN. KAAN's engines are currently awaiting approval in the US Congress," Fidan said, his remarks raising eyebrows back home as Turkey had said the KAAN would be entirely domestically produced.