An F-35B fighter jet lands at Luke Air Force Base in this Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013 file photo, in Goodyear, Ariz.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said: "Excluding Turkey, one of the main partners from the F-35 programme is unfair, and the claim that S-400 system will weaken the F-35s is invalid."reached out to Edward Erickson, Professor of International Relations at Antalya Bilim University, and Merve Seren, Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations of Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University.
“NATO has a 20-year history of operating Soviet and Russian equipment alongside NATO systems,” he says, referring to Poland, Romania, Hungary and others that “still use Soviet aircraft and tanks."“In my view, [it] is not really an operational issue for NATO. It is a ‘concern’ for NATO rather than a ‘problem’ and NATO can easily work around the deployment of S-400s in Turkey,” Erickson says.
That said, she adds: “Since its 1952 membership, Turkey has experienced both direct and indirect embargoes from various NATO states such as the US, Germany, and Holland.” “America would prefer that Turkey, and all of its weapons clients, actually, remain dependent on American weapons and spare parts because this can be used as political leverage to achieve American policy goals.”