The prospect of Turkey returning to the F-35 fighter jet programme has opened a new front in Washington, with the Greek-American lobby and members of Congress seeking to preserve the existing legal obstacles to the sale of US fighters to Ankara.
The issue returned to the fore after US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but so far there has been no official decision by the US administration on Turkey’s re-entry into the programme.
Athens acknowledges that decisions on armaments are a sovereign right of every country and that it has no power of veto over US decisions. However, it believes it has both the right and the obligation to raise with its allies the security issues it considers critical for the stability of the region.
Officials in Athens stress that Turkey remains a NATO ally, yet there are still open issues in Greek-Turkish relations, such as the continued existence of the justification for war adopted by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1995, the challenges to Greek sovereign rights and the disputes in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
For this reason, Greece is calling for any decisions on the sale of advanced weapons systems to be accompanied by clear safeguards and assurances that they cannot be used against another member state of the Alliance.
