A refusal by the United States to hand over to Turkey the F-35 fighters jets which it has bought would be “robbery”, media reports on Thursday cited President Tayyip Erdogan as saying in a dispute over Ankara’s purchase of Russian air defenses.
U.S. officials have told Reuters the Trump administration still plans to impose sanctions on Turkey and remove it from the F-35 program if its NATO ally acquires the Russian S-400 missile defense system.
“If you have a customer and that customer is making payments like clockwork, how can you not give that customer their goods? The name of that would be robbery,” Hurriyet newspaper quoted Erdogan as telling reporters during a visit to China.
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