Turkey scrambles to contain fallout after Fidan says KAAN jet dependent on US
Critics say the admission underscores vulnerabilities in Turkey’s armed forces and highlights the challenges of achieving independence from Western suppliers.
The Turkish government is seeking to walk back comments by its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who admitted during a news conference in New York over the weekend that Turkey cannot produce its much-vaunted fifth-generation KAAN fighter jet because of US sanctions.
Fidan said that the sanctions imposed on Turkey in 2019 under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) pose “a systemic problem that blocks the trade of defense systems between two [NATO] allies.”
“For example, there is the issue of the F-35s and the KAAN fighter jet engines, whose license is stuck in Congress," Fidan said. “The license must be granted for the engines to arrive so that production of the KAAN can begin."
Coming on the heels of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Sept. 25 summit with President Donald Trump, his words triggered a firestorm. Opposition figures are mocking the government over its claim that an array of military hardware currently in production is locally sourced.
