To the casual Western observer, Turkey’s behavior looks like textbook cognitive dissonance. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan brands the United States an imperialist sponsor of terrorism, a declining hegemon, and the chief architect of regional chaos. Yet the same government lobbies for F-16 Block 70 upgrades and demands readmission to the F-35 program. How can a state that rails against American hegemony simultaneously beg for its most advanced aerospace technology?
The answer is simple: There is no contradiction inside the Turkish strategic mind. What looks like hypocrisy to Washington is, in Ankara, a doctrine of compartmentalization and pragmatism. Ideology sets the destination: strategic autonomy and regional primacy in a post-American Middle East. American hardware is the rented ladder needed to climb out of today’s vulnerability. The new Turkey is using the hegemon’s tools to build the machine that will one day render the hegemon irrelevant.
What looks like hypocrisy to Washington is, in Ankara, a doctrine of compartmentalization and pragmatism.
This is a policy hardwired across the Erdoǧan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), its Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) allies, the defense bureaucracy, and an ecosystem of aligned think tanks. Turkey has mastered drones such as the Baykar TB2, combat-proven in multiple theaters, and corvettes (the MILGEM program), but fast-jet propulsion remains an engineering bottleneck. An indigenous turbofan is still a decade away. Without GE engines, the KAAN project collapses.
The immediate math is more compelling. Greece’s air force is surging with Viper-upgraded F-16s and French Rafales entering its air fleet. By 2030, the Hellenic fleet will enjoy qualitative superiority. Should Turkey lose air dominance over the Aegean, the entire “Mavi Vatan” (Blue Homeland) maritime doctrine becomes unenforceable.
To sell this to a nationalist base, the government deploys an entitlement. Turkey was a Level 3 partner in the F-35 program, contributed 900+ parts, and paid $1.4 billion before expulsion. The line repeated in SETA Foundation papers and parliamentary speeches is crystalline: “We paid for these jets. We built them. Washington stole our sovereign property.”
Nor is this the only anti-American narrative. The SETA Foundation, the AKP’s chief think tank in Washington, argues that the United States backs Kurdish “terrorists” in Syria and enables “genocide” in Gaza, even as it compartmentalizes these attacks when it argues Lockheed Martin has the best engines.
Beneath the pragmatism lies a deeper ideological superstructure. State-aligned think tanks—The SETA Foundation, Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM), the Institute for Strategic Thinking (SDE), and Justice Defenders Strategic Research Center (ASSAM)—function as the intellectual scaffolding. Their reports recycle a consistent canon:
- “The United States is actively arming and funding terrorist organizations on our southern border,” declares a SETA report on the PKK/YPG in Syria;
- “Washington’s unconditional support for Israeli aggression…” frames an ORSAM spotlight on the U.S.-Israel-Iran war;
- “The era of unchecked American unipolar hegemony has permanently ended,” argues an SDE essay on the collapse of the U.S. and Europe; and
- ASSAM’s official declaration casts the U.S. and NATO as a “world gendarmerie.”
ASSAM, founded by Erdoğan’s former military advisor Adnan Tanrıverdi, openly calls for an Islamic confederation (ASRICA) to counter American power. Personnel flow constantly between these institutes and the presidential palace. İbrahim Kalın, for example, moved from SETA (and Georgetown University) to head national intelligence.
Western policymakers who still treat Turkey as a wayward NATO ally missing its “shared values” memo are themselves missing the strategic reality.
Parliamentary rhetoric mirrors the think-tank output. MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli calls U.S. Central Command “the patron of terrorism.” AKP Deputy Chair Süleyman Soylu insists “America is behind the July 15, 2016, coup attempt.” Parliamentary President Numan Kurtulmuş accuses the U.S. of shielding genocide. Erdoğan himself toggles seamlessly between fiery condemnation and cool negotiation. Essentially, the think tanks exist to insert the Turkish narrative as scholarly opinion inside the United States itself.
This is not episodic anger. It rests on five interlocking pillars: Sèvres Syndrome 2.0, the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis, calculated multipolarity, domestic utility, and a sophisticated division of labor that lets radicals set the tone while technocrats keep the contracts flowing.
The Leninist flourish is irresistible: Turkey is buying the rope (American engines, avionics, and political access) with which it intends, over the long arc, to hang American primacy in its neighborhood. The KAAN prototype flying on GE power today is the bridge to the fully indigenous fighter that will patrol a Turkish-led sphere free of U.S. vetoes.
Western policymakers who still treat Turkey as a wayward NATO ally missing its “shared values” memo are themselves missing the strategic reality. Ankara is not confused. It is playing a multi-decade game in which tactical dependence on American technology is the necessary down payment on strategic independence. The rhetoric is the future; the purchase orders are the present.
The uncomfortable truth is that Turkey’s compartmentalization is working. The air force stays viable, the defense industry advances, the domestic base stays mobilized, and the United States remains entangled, paying the lobbyists, selling the engines, and wondering why its “ally” sounds like an adversary.
