US refusal to give F-35s to Turkey would be ‘robbery’ – Erdogan

A refusal by the US to hand over to Turkey the F-35 fighters jets which it has bought would be “robbery,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was cited on Thursday as saying.

“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 daily quoted Erdogan as telling reporters during a visit to China.

He said that Ankara had so far paid $1.4 billion for the F-35s and that four jets had been handed over. “We have made an agreement to buy 116 F-35s… We produce some of the parts in Turkey,” he said.

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 defence system, according to Reuters.