A retired Rear Admiral of the Turkish Armed Forces revealed that Ankara’s plan was to replace the aging F-16s and F-4s with the state-of-the-art F-35s, but this was scrapped after Turkey was kicked out of the production programme due to the acquisition of the Russian S-400s.

The Turkish analyst, a retired Vice Admiral named Erdogan Karakus, revealed that Ankara’s plan was to acquire 100 to 110 F-35 from the USA during an interview on CNN Turk.

“Turkey with the F-35s had a plan to remove from its fleet about 40 older F-16s as well as about 50 F-4s that had been in service for almost 50 years, while it had already retired the F5s. But since Turkey did not get the F-35s, the replacement process was not possible. Our plan, in this case, was to have 100 to 110 F-35s,” said the retired vice-admiral, saying that the only way is to strengthen the F-16s. “Since it was not possible to buy them, just as it was not possible to modernise the aircraft, the need finally arose for additional support in F-16s in place of F-35s”.

Recently, Karakus argued that any “hot incident” with Greece would develop into a “total war” between the two countries, pointing out the importance of the “air superiority” that Turkey should have, in order not to suffer serious losses on the ground.

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