Turkey buys American engines to power the fighter built to end its dependence on America. That is not a contradiction. It is the doctrine, and the threat.
The Research Package
Start here: the full body of work
This page is the hub for the Middle East Forum's assessment of Turkey's think-tank ecosystem. The report comes in two parts, with companion data and commentary. Each component below links to its page on meforum.org.
Part I · The Argument
Ending the Subsidy. The full threat assessment: the five-logic doctrine, the think-tank machine, the operating system, the threat to U.S. interests, and the policy recommendations.
Part II · The Evidence Base
The Intellectual Architecture of Turkish Foreign Policy. The underlying 21-organization study, with the four-pillar U.S.-posture analysis and the conclusion matrix.
21 Organizational Dossiers
A searchable profile of every organization: identity, leadership, funding, output, four-pillar posture, media footprint, and the personnel pipeline into the state.
The Network Matrix
An interactive map: the posture spectrum, the think-tank-to-state pipeline graph, and filterable organization, personnel, and strategic-implications tables.
Published Commentary
The lead essay in the Middle East Forum Observer, plus the companion op-ed in Ynetnews on anchoring U.S. Caucasus strategy on Azerbaijan.
The series. Every component above is published on meforum.org as part of The Architecture of Turkey's Anti-Americanism.
The Doctrine
Compartmentalized hostility
To a Western observer it looks like cognitive dissonance: a state that brands the United States an imperial threat and a sponsor of terrorism, while lobbying to buy F-16s, demanding readmission to the F-35 program, and powering its proudest national project, the KAAN fighter, with American GE engines. Inside the Turkish establishment, there is no contradiction. Ankara separates the future it wants from the present it is stuck with, and manages the gap with five logics.
The engine bottleneck
Turkey can build a stealth airframe but not its turbofan. The indigenous TEI-TF35000 is 10+ years out, so the KAAN flies on the American GE F110: a rented ladder across the period of vulnerability.
The Aegean math
After the 2019 F-35 expulsion, Greece bought 24 Rafales, upgraded its F-16s to Viper, and won approval for up to 40 F-35s. By 2030 Athens holds the edge. Only American jets close the gap.
The "stolen property" narrative
A Level-3 F-35 partner that machined about 900 parts and pre-paid roughly $1.4B reframes begging as recovering stolen goods: we paid for these jets; America is a pirate state.
The bazaar
Every issue sits in its own stall. "We will pay you billions for your hardware, but we will not buy your foreign policy." Hardware and loyalty, deliberately decoupled.
Keeping the U.S. "in the tent"
Multibillion-dollar contracts entangle the U.S. defense-industrial base in Turkey's prosperity, buying lobbying leverage inside Washington against the pressure Washington might apply.
The tell
A state that merely disliked America would not manage its dependence this carefully. A state that intends to outgrow America does exactly that.
"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Turkey's planners read the line and took it as a procurement strategy.
The Machine
Turkey's think-tank state
Anti-Americanism in Turkey is not improvised at the podium. It is researched, drafted, and rehearsed inside a layered ecosystem of policy institutes, family foundations, and a state-owned defense house, then carried into the presidency, the foreign ministry, and the intelligence service by the same people who write it.
The apex pipeline: from seminar room to situation room
The incubators
ASSAM and SDE draft the maximalist blueprints: ASSAM's "ASRICA" model constitution for an Islamic confederation built to replace NATO, under the slogan "USA… Get Out." They push the Overton window toward the collapse of the West.
The firebrands
Parliamentary voices deliver the conspiratorial, overtly hostile speeches that mobilize the nationalist base. They are the "id" of the state.
The technocrats
Kalın, FM Fidan, and SETA scholars deliver cold, institutional critiques calibrated for Washington's ear, signaling that Turkey's grievances are structural, not emotional.
The pendulum
Erdoğan calls the U.S. complicit in genocide one morning and negotiates an F-16 sale the next, using the anti-Americanism his subordinates manufacture as leverage.
The Network
21 organizations, five clusters
This Middle East Forum report maps the ecosystem from the apex pro-government shops to the marginalized transatlantic holdouts. Posture toward the United States, color-coded.
The landscape at a glance: where the institutions sit
Full per-organization dossiers (leadership, funding, output, four-pillar U.S. posture, controversies) and a personnel/network matrix are published as part of the series.
The Operating System
Why it outlasts Erdoğan
This is not one man's temper. Turkish anti-Americanism has migrated into the operating system of the state, running on layers no single election will switch off.
The stack that survives any election
Sèvres Syndrome 2.0
The 1920 trauma of attempted Western partition, updated: the U.S. arming Syria's Kurds reads as a "Modern Sèvres," and the 2016 coup as Washington's attempt to destroy the Turkish state.
The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis
Islamist grievance (Milli Görüş) fused after 2016 with secular-nationalist Eurasianism. Opposing America becomes at once a religious duty and a security imperative: bulletproof.
Strategic autonomy
A judgment that the unipolar moment is over. Decoupling from U.S. supply chains is framed as decolonization: breaking Washington's "kill-switch" over Turkish weapons.
Domestic utility
An omnipotent "supreme mastermind" (Washington) to blame for the lira and the opposition. Anti-Americanism is now the litmus test of Turkish patriotism.
The Threat to U.S. Interests
Concrete and compounding
Defense
A Russian S-400 inside NATO airspace; an indigenization drive built to end U.S. leverage; and American B61 nuclear weapons still at Incirlik, on the soil of a government that threatens to close the base. As of mid-2026, Turkey remains F-35-barred.
Intelligence
The MİT is led by the architect of the "America orchestrated the coup" narrative. Cooperation on Syria and ISIS detainees carries a counterintelligence cost, and the family-foundation network has proposed surveilling dissidents abroad "in coordination with" the service.
Diplomacy
NATO access used against the alliance: slow-walking Finland and Sweden, proxy operations against U.S. partners, and building the convening infrastructure of a post-American bloc with Russia, China, and the Turkic states.
The danger is not that Turkey leaves NATO. It is that Turkey stays, and uses the access membership confers to assemble the order designed to replace it.
What Washington Should Do
End one-way compartmentalization
The fix is not a rupture. It is symmetry: take Ankara at its word that hardware and politics are separable, and apply the rule in reverse. Charge full price, in conduct, not just cash.
- Condition every advanced capability on measurable conduct. No F-35 readmission while a Russian S-400 sits on Turkish soil: removed and verified, not "managed." Tie new F-16s and engine cooperation to behavior toward U.S. forces and partners in Syria.
- Remove the B61 nuclear weapons from Incirlik. Do not leave a hostage on the table.
- Treat the intelligence relationship with open eyes. Scope cooperation realistically and bring U.S. and allied law against transnational repression on Western soil.
- Apply the Foreign Agents Registration Act to the U.S.-based foundation affiliates and the Washington arms of the state-aligned think tanks.
- Stop ceding the convening space in the Turkic world, the Caucasus, and Africa. Compete with presence, not press releases.
- Resource the transatlantic holdouts: EDAM, GRF, TEPAV, FPI. Washington spends fortunes on hardware for Ankara and pennies on the Turks who want the alliance to work. Reverse the ratio.
Evidence & Sources
