Congress targets Turkey’s KAAN engines

The US government told Congress on 24 June that it planned to sell General Electric F110 engines to Turkey for the KAAN fighter jet, Ankara's homegrown aircraft project. The package is worth roughly $700 million, according to ProtoThema. Within days, Democratic Representative Dina Titus moved to block it.

The dispute may look technical, but it lands in a part of the Mediterranean where military balance is never abstract. Washington now has to decide whether defence exports should be used to keep Turkey inside Western supply chains, or whether the punishment imposed after Ankara bought Russia's S-400 air-defence system still means what it was meant to mean. Greece, Cyprus and Turkey will read that answer very differently.

What Congress can actually do

The US sells weapons to allies through Foreign Military Sales, the government-to-government channel used for major arms deals. Once the administration notifies Congress, lawmakers can try to stop the sale. Titus used the available mechanism: a joint resolution of disapproval, which forces a vote on whether a notified sale should be blocked (ProtoThema, CRS).

On paper, that sounds like a hard veto. In practice, it is a political weapon more than a legal one. The resolution must pass both the House and the Senate. The president can veto it. To override that veto, two-thirds of both chambers must agree (CRS). Congress almost never gets there. Its leverage is to force a public argument, raise the diplomatic cost, and make the administration think harder before the next, bigger notification.

The engine sale and any Turkish return to the F-35 programme are not the same decision. KAAN is still a prototype. It cannot become a credible fighter without engines, Western supply-chain access, and years of testing (El Confidencial). Letting Turkey back into the F-35 would be a far bigger act of trust, because it would reverse Ankara's 2019 expulsion from the programme. No formal F-35 notification for Turkey appears in the public DSCA record.

The S-400 trap

Turkey's purchase of Russia's S-400 missile system remains the central problem. Washington expelled Turkey from the F-35 programme in 2019, arguing that Russian air-defence equipment operating near the F-35 could expose the aircraft's stealth capabilities (White House). In December 2020, the US sanctioned Turkey's defence-procurement authority under CAATSA, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which penalises significant defence transactions with Russia (State Department).

That created a credibility test. If Washington now approves advanced exports without a verified settlement on the S-400s, it tells allies that sanctions can be softened when the country being sanctioned is useful enough. Greek and Cypriot critics are pressing exactly that point: the issue is not only the KAAN engine, but whether enforcement has any meaning while the S-400 question remains unresolved (Capital, CNA).

For Malta, this is not a distant quarrel between larger states. Eastern Mediterranean security shapes the operating environment around us, from NATO coordination to migration routes and energy politics. A decision taken in Washington about Turkish engines can quickly become part of the wider balance between Ankara, Athens and Nicosia.

Europe reads the same file from different starting points

European allies do not have one Turkey policy because they do not carry the same risks.

Greece reads the file through airpower. Athens has bought 18 Rafale fighters from France and secured US approval for up to 40 F-35 aircraft (Dassault Aviation, DSCA). While Turkey remains outside the F-35 programme, Greece keeps an advantage in the air. If Ankara is brought back in, that advantage narrows.

Germany starts from Turkey's usefulness to NATO. Ankara has the alliance's second-largest military, controls access through the Bosporus, and has supplied Ukraine with drones (FAZ). German reporting treats engines for KAAN as a limited concession, while F-35 access remains the much harder trust question (merkur.de).

Spain adds another signal. After the Franco-German-Spanish future combat aircraft project, FCAS, ran into serious trouble over design authority and workshare, Madrid explored preliminary contacts about KAAN. Reporting also noted that the Turkish aircraft is too immature for Spain's carrier-aviation needs (El Confidencial). That does not make KAAN a real alternative yet. It shows that when Europe's own fighter programmes stall, even a prototype can become useful in negotiations.

What hasn't happened yet

No verified plan for disposing of the S-400s has surfaced. No formal F-35 notification for Turkey exists. No detailed Turkish proposal for meeting the conditions attached to the 2019 expulsion has appeared publicly (Haberler, Jerusalem Post).

Until that changes, the engine fight is a skirmish before the larger F-35 decision. The argument for the sale is serious: US engines would keep Turkey tied to Western supply chains and give Washington leverage over the KAAN programme. The argument against it is just as serious: weakening CAATSA tells every ally that sanctions can be waited out. Whether Titus's resolution passes or not, it raises the price of any future F-35 move and forces Washington to decide which signal matters more, the one heard in Athens or the one heard in Ankara.