Turkey's F-35 Reinstatement Remains a Long Shot Through 2027

Turkey's path back into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program remains narrow and uncertain, with the money that tracks these things giving Ankara only a modest chance of formal reinstatement before mid-2027. The odds are not negligible, but at roughly one-in-three, they reflect a situation where the political will may be flickering without the institutional machinery to match it.

What would have to be true for this pricing to make sense? The market's collective read implies that while U.S.-Turkey relations have warmed at the margins — Ankara's eventual approval of Sweden's NATO accession, renewed engagement on defense cooperation, and Turkey's continued leverage as a Black Sea gatekeeper — the structural barriers to F-35 reinstatement remain formidable. Congress has embedded restrictions on F-35 transfers to Turkey tied to the S-400 purchase, and no legislative path to unwinding those conditions has emerged with anything approaching certainty. The money appears to be pricing in diplomatic drift rather than a negotiated breakthrough.

The near-term window looks even thinner. The odds of reinstatement arriving by the end of 2026 have edged lower, signaling that bettors see no imminent deal on the horizon — no signed framework, no credible S-400 disposal arrangement, no congressional waiver moving through committee. The slightly longer runway to mid-2027 is where the bulk of the remaining probability lives, and even there the market is far from convinced.

Turkey was removed from the F-35 program in 2019 after Ankara accepted delivery of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, triggering U.S. sanctions under CAATSA. Since then, the two NATO allies have haggled over a resolution — with Turkey alternately floating S-400 disposal, warehousing, or transfer to a third party — without landing on terms acceptable to both sides. Meanwhile, Turkey has pressed ahead with its own TF-X Kaan fighter program, giving Ankara an independent path and, paradoxically, slightly less urgency to resolve the F-35 dispute on American terms.

The stakes are real for both sides. Turkey operated F-16s and had invested billions in F-35 supply chain contracts before its exclusion; reinstatement would restore both operational capability and industrial revenue. For Washington, reintegrating a frontline NATO ally into its premier fighter program would carry symbolic and strategic weight, particularly as the alliance recalibrates around Russian aggression in Europe. But symbols do not move CAATSA waivers through a divided Congress.

The most likely path the money is pricing, implicitly, is continued stalemate punctuated by diplomatic signals that never quite crystallize into a deal. A secondary scenario — the one that would make the current 32% look underpriced — involves a grand bargain in which Turkey makes a verifiable commitment on the S-400 and the White House expends real political capital to secure a congressional carve-out. That path exists; it simply lacks a visible catalyst right now. What would break the market's skeptical read is concrete evidence of S-400 movement or a formal U.S. proposal to Congress — neither of which has surfaced.

Until that changes, Turkey's F-35 reinstatement is a live possibility rather than a likely outcome — a negotiation that both sides have reasons to want resolved and equally strong reasons to leave unresolved for another season.