However, the foreign minister has said that Turkey will examine alternatives if it can not buy the F-35 jets, and Russia's Su-57 or Su-34 jets are seen as strong contenders in this instance.
Erdogan's govt has no clue what it's doing.
This is all the more likely due to Turkey's complicated partnership with Russia in the conflict in neighboring Syria, said analyst Seth J. Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post on Friday.
And why does it have a "
complicated partnership with Russia", at all? They were in NATO and the F-35A program, while Russia was sanctioned by the US and allies while Turkey was backing the FSA's miserable detritus, as Erdogan's pet proxies, which the Russians are in fact fighting. So why are they buying anything off Russian arms producers using Moscow's soft-loans, and breaking US sanctions?
And now talking openly about breaking sanctions again?
Due to the complex web of relations between different actors in Syria, Turkey might need to buy Russian jets to secure its national interests in the war-torn country.
And this is a basis for procurement decision to buy a new air force?
Gross
external debt $452.4 billion (31 Dec 2017 est.) ... In March 2018, Moody's downgraded Turkey's sovereign debt into junk status, warning of an erosion of checks and balances under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In May 2018, credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Turkey's debt rating further into junk territory, citing widening concern about the outlook for inflation amid a sell-off in the Turkish lira currency. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Turkey
Turkey's been in a recession for most of a year now, and the average inflation rate has moved between 15 percent and 25 percent in the same period. Meanwhile the Lira purchasing power has sunk to about 15% of the purchasing power against USD when Erdogan came to power.
https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/inflation-cpiSo this is all just
window-shopping, as Erdogan can't afford to buy any fighters without a soft 'loan', while Turkey's existing half a trillion $USD in external debt is rated as
junk.
I suppose he could barter for a dozen "6th-gen" Saab JAS-39F in exchange for figs and olives. This is part of the real reason why there's this pretense of a, "
complicated partnership with Russia". Who wants to partner with or to lend money to a destitute state lead by a dictator who consistently makes the wrong choices and back-stabs their existing partners? It's not a good look.
The window-shopping charade will continue so that Erdogan can present himself as someone who matters. The Pentagon may want to keep Turkey in the fold but Erdogan's a dry-hole and until he's gone Turkey will be a pawn of anyone who pays him, fluffs him up, and helps to keep him in power.