Hulusi Akar spent the middle of July in Washington and came away sounding like a man who had heard good news.
The chairman of the Turkish parliament's National Defense Committee, and a former defense minister, led a delegation through the House Armed Services, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees. Speaking to reporters at the Turkish embassy on 17 July, he said the S-400 question would be resolved one way or another, that the two sides had agreed to settle it quickly, and that the Americans had responded positively. Since the Russian air-defense system was the reason Türkiye was suspended from the F-35 program in 2019, he said, resolving it would let the fighter-jet process start again directly.
Five days later the State Department put something rather different in writing.
In a letter dated 22 July, written on the White House's behalf and sent to Representative Wesley Bell, a Missouri Democrat who had asked about Türkiye's possible return, the department told Congress that American policy has not changed and that Türkiye has not yet met the legal conditions.
The conditions, as reported, are specific. Türkiye must no longer possess the S-400 system or any equipment related to it. It must give assurances that it will not acquire such a system again. And it must satisfy the remaining certification requirements written into US law.
The letter was obtained by the Greek daily Kathimerini and its contents were carried by Israeli and other outlets, including the Jerusalem Post, before reaching the Turkish press. TurkishPress has not seen the document. Ankara has made no public response to it.
Akar was describing a negotiation. The letter is describing a statute.
American policy here does not rest on a presidential preference. It rests on CAATSA, the 2017 sanctions law, and on Section 1245 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, a section that exists in the published statute for the sole purpose of limiting the transfer of F-35 aircraft to Türkiye. Donald Trump has said he would lift the sanctions and would consider letting Türkiye buy the jets. That alone does not put a jet on a Turkish runway. Someone has to certify to Congress that the conditions are met.
The letter is not uniformly cold. It confirms that talks between Washington and Ankara are continuing, and says any arrangement must be transparent, lawful and consistent with American national security interests. It credits Türkiye's part in the Russia-Ukraine and Azerbaijan-Armenia files, in the Gaza process, and in counterterrorism work against Daesh, and notes Ankara's role in getting the ceasefire's first phase accepted.
Türkiye's own position has not moved in seven years. Ankara argues there is no technical conflict between the S-400 and the F-35, has proposed a joint commission to examine the question, says it met every obligation it had under the program, and treats the 2019 suspension as a breach of the program's own rules. It has also argued that Turkish F-35s would strengthen NATO rather than expose it.
Ankara has not said where the missiles go.
The Defense Ministry was asked about that on 16 July, after reports that the systems might be handed to a third country. Work on the S-400s continues "in a multi-directional way," the ministry spokesman said, and concrete developments would be shared with the public when there were any. President Erdoğan, asked about the systems' future at the Ankara NATO summit, told reporters to keep watching. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the subject super sensitive.
Every Turkish formulation so far has been about resolving the S-400 issue. The letter asks for something narrower and harder to walk back: that the system, and the parts that come with it, stop being Turkish property, and that Ankara promise in advance never to buy the like again.
Those are different sentences. Whether they can be made to mean the same thing is now the F-35 program's oldest open question.