Moscow is ready to help NATO-member Turkey develop its newest fighter jet, a leading Russian defense official revealed on Sunday, reported the Russia Today—RT—news channel.
Ankara had previously indicated it was open to cooperating on the matter with friendly countries.
“Russia has repeatedly expressed readiness to assist Turkey [in the development of a fifth-generation fighter jet], but right now this project is in the negotiation phase,” the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC), Dmitry Shugayev, told RIA Novosti.
Ismail Demir, the chairman of the Presidency of Defense Industries, a Turkish government agency, told the media in September that Ankara was looking to cooperate with friendly states on the design of such an aircraft.
The US expelled Turkey from its F-35 program in 2019, canceling the delivery of jets promised to Ankara after it rejected America’s demand to scrap the deal to purchase S-400 mobile air defense missile systems from Russia.
Turkey has maintained that it will choose arms sales partners regardless of outside pressure and in spite of its membership of the US-led NATO military bloc.
In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed the fifth-generation multi-purpose Su-57 stealth fighter to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was touring an air show near Moscow.
Putin is on the path of replacing Armenia with Turkey as a best friend country.
Putin is looking for western enemies and terrorist Turkey is a perfect candidate because Turkey belonging to western alliance has now made alliances with the enemy of that very same alliance to which Turkey belongs. This is Turkish logic. If you can’t get from your allies what you want, make an alliance with their enemies. But this is Turkey’s bluff that will backfire. It already has actually. The US kept Turkey out of their F-35 fighter jet program and rejected Turkey’s desire and demand for their deliveries to Turkey. The US also slapped Turkey on the face by officially acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. But this alliance between terrorist Turkey and Russia is short-lived and won’t last long because in the past Turkey, the Ottoman Empire at the time, and Russia were enemies historically and fought a dozen wars over the centuries which Turkey was the loser in every single one of them and right now they are having a short honeymoon using each other to get what they want from their respective allies. The relationship between terrorist Turkey and Russia is like the relationship between divorced couples. They detest and can’t stand each other but they need to come together once in a while for their selfish interests and gains.
The real question here then is US genuine enough in its stand to punish Turkey for its transgressions against its western allies or will they fold like a lawn chair once the Turkish charlatan and terrorist-in-chief Er-dog-an spreads his “namaz” rug in front of them and apologizes by taking the position like he did with Putin in Moscow when he went begging Putin to forgive him for Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian jet and killing the pilot some years ago when the US against Turkey’s demands collaborated with Turkey’s Kurdish enemy by arming them to fight against their common ISIS enemy and Russia placing economic blockade on Turkey. We shall see!