Trump: Erdogan Wanted to Help Iran, Now He Gets His Reward

It’s not surprising, but more than a little disturbing. President Trump revealed that he had to convince our NATO ally Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, not to enter the war on Iran’s side when the United States and Israel struck Iran. 

That would have been quite awkward, to say the least. 

President Trump revealed this surprising factoid pretty casually, as he also revealed that he would be rewarding the wayward ally with ties to Islamists and our adversary Russia with permission to purchase fighter engines, and even, perhaps, F-35s. 

“He was a prime candidate to go into the war with Iran — maybe on the Iran side, because he’s not a big fan of Israel,” Trump claimed, even though Turkey gave no indication that it was preparing to enter the US-Israel war against Iran and even came under Iranian fire at one point.

“I asked him to stay out. He stayed out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“Erdogan is a great leader, a very strong person… Everything I’ve ever asked from him, he’s done.”

The remarks from Trump came as Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials have recently ramped up threats against the Jewish state, with Turkey’s interior minister calling earlier this month for the country to “liberate” Jerusalem.

Trump is getting a lot of blowback for praising Erdogan and rewarding him for not actively thwarting or even attacking a NATO ally, and it’s not exactly shocking that the reaction has been surprise and consternation, given Turkey’s hostility to Israel’s existence, its support for terrorists in Hamas and Hezbollah, and its cozy relationship with some of our adversaries, including Iran and Russia. 

🚨WATCH: Donald Trump on NATO Allies regarding Iran: “It would have been nice if they said we’d like to help, we didn’t even need it.”

“But I was disappointed with Italy, with the UK, and Starmer is now gone, Germany, France, and Spain is a Horror Show.” pic.twitter.com/pOKZBwWhQJ

— THE GLOBAL WATCHDOG (@glwatchdog) June 24, 2026

Turkey was originally part of the F-35 program, but that changed when it bought Soviet air defenses, giving Russia the opportunity to map the radar signature unimpeded and to target the stealth aircraft more accurately, which aren’t so much invisible to radar as difficult to target. The data would be a goldmine for any adversary. 

US Vice President JD Vance indicated on Wednesday that a review was underway to see how the United States could sell Turkey F-35 fighter jets, given Ankara’s 2019 acquisition of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

“Pete and the entire team are reviewing this right now, because there are certain things that we have to certify have happened…in order to comply with American law. The president has asked us to do that,” Vance told reporters.

US President Donald Trump’s administration is also planning to push ahead with the sale of dozens of jet engines to Turkey worth hundreds of millions of dollars despite objections from some members of the US Congress, four sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, an important gesture to Ankara ahead of a NATO summit there next month.

Turkey has become increasingly hostile and authoritarian under Erdogan’s rule, as well as more aggressive against Erdogan’s domestic enemies and the Kurdish population. 

The opposition to giving Turkey what it wants is easily understood, but there are good reasons for Trump to cozy up to Turkey as well. There are good reasons for keeping Turkey in the NATO alliance, not the least of which is its strategic position. And, of course, there is always the wisdom of the old saying that it is better to keep those you don’t trust inside pissing out than outside pissing into it. 

Turkey and the United States have generally enjoyed warm ties under Trump, who regularly praises Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. However, their relationship has been tested by a long-standing disagreement over Washington’s decision to remove Turkey from the F-35 stealth fighter jet program and impose sanctions after Ankara acquired Russian-made S-400 air defense systems, which the United States says pose a security threat.

Asked on Wednesday about the jet engines, the F-35 program, and his plans for the summit in Ankara, Trump said: “I’m going to probably do ⁠something that will make them very happy.”

While the engine sale is likely to be welcomed in Ankara, analysts say it falls well short of Turkey’s broader goal of returning to the F-35 program.

“Acquiring the engines is certainly important for Turkey, but it is also the lowest-hanging fruit for a U.S. administration that has made far more ambitious promises to Ankara, including Turkey’s return to the F-35 program,” said Gonul Tol, director of the Washington-based Middle East Institute’s Turkish program.

“The real test of whether Washington and Ankara can open a new chapter in bilateral relations lies there,” Tol said.

U.S. law does not permit Turkey to operate or possess the S-400 system if it wishes to rejoin the F-35 program. However, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said in December that the warm relationship between Trump and Erdogan helped the two sides hold “the most fruitful conversations we have had on this topic in nearly a decade.”

Trump has a habit of praising semi-hostile and hostile dictators, a practice that many people completely fail to understand. It’s not that he loves dictators; it’s that he believes buttering them up softens them and improves our negotiating position. 

His practice of criticizing our friends and praising our adversaries frustrates and even angers his critics, of whom I am occasionally one, but I actually think Trump is being smart here. Our allies don’t budge from bad policies when we praise them; they get complacent when they should be stepping up to the plate. Our adversaries already hate us, so giving them a little love, especially when they are tyrants who crave love, can be a useful tactic. 

The problem with Turkey is that it is a frenemy, and both sides know it. Each side needs something from the other, but neither side trusts the other, with good reason. Turkey opposes our Middle East policies, which are core to our security, and aids implicitly and explicitly enemies whom we want destroyed. 

‘Look at the discount Erdogan is getting. He gets the F-35 for not fighting with the US, meanwhile the European leaders get the ire of Donald Trump’

Analyst @perry_dan and Senior Correspondent @owenalterman join @natasharaquel_ on #MiddleEastNow pic.twitter.com/tvvdE4blu3

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 25, 2026

With that said, I don’t like at all that we are rewarding Erdogan for…not trying to kill Israeli pilots and us. That would seem to be a bare minimum for a NATO ally, after all. One assumes that Erdogan wouldn’t attack a US aircraft; he could have intervened against Israeli craft, igniting a new front in the war, and blowing up our own attacks against Iran because, technically, we might have to defend a NATO country. 

What a mess that would be. 

You can see why Trump wants to bribe Erdogan, and one wonders whether there wasn’t a side deal cut to avoid such a messy situation. 

Still, this move sucks. Turkey is not our friend, whatever they and we pretend. Splitting the baby in half and giving them the jet engines while denying the F-35 sale, which would be easy enough because US law nominally prevents selling them to Turkey, seems like a good compromise. The F-100 engines are good and all, but without an excellent aircraft with well-trained pilots, they don’t present nearly the threat that an F-35 in our adversaries’ hands would. 

Trump is in a genuine bind here. Unless everybody wants to kick Turkey out of NATO, which is not the case, he has to keep relations relatively normal. 

Where is the next NATO summit, coming in a month? Ankara, Turkey. 

Because of course it is. 

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