US Offered to Sell Turkey More F-16 Fighter Jets in Place of F-35s, Erdogan Says

The United States has offered to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey to make up for the hefty payment it made into the F-35 program, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday. Turkey paid $1.4 billion in to the F-35 program to order 100 of the jets, produced by the Lockheed Martin Corp. But Turkey was removed from the program after its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system, after protests from the US went unheeded. And Erdogan said recently that Turkey plans to buy more S-400s from Russia. Turkey earlier this month asked the United States to buy 40 F-16 fighter jets and nearly 80 modernization kits for the warplanes it already has.