Senator Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump’s closest Congressional allies, met Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an effort to mend an alliance most recently strained by Ankara’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system.
“We’re trying to get them back in the F-35 program,” Graham said in New York on Sunday. The U.S. has locked Türkiye out of a program for advanced F-35 fighter jets to punish it for buying Russian S-400 missiles that Washington says could compromise intelligence gathered by American aircraft.
Erdogan met with Graham ahead of a possible gathering with Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week. Graham praised Türkiye as a “very important ally” in the Middle East and said both countries may also “talk about about a free trade agreement.”
Erdogan, meanwhile, is shopping around for alternatives to the F-35 that could draw him even closer to Moscow.