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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump will meet on the sidelines of this month's U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Türkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, said at an event in Istanbul.
President Erdogan is set to travel to New York next week for the U.N. General Assembly meeting.
Erdogan and Trump last met in person at the NATO summit hosted in Ankara.
During their meeting at the Presidential Complex on July 7, the two leaders held productive talks that touched on the F-35 fighter jet program, engines for Türkiye's KAAN fighter jets, and CAATSA sanctions.
Speaking to reporters after that meeting, Trump said relations with Türkiye had never been better.
"You've been a great leader and a respected leader all over the world, and we really do, we have, we've had right from the beginning, good chemistry. We've had a very special relationship. Türkiye has become, under the president, a very powerful country militarily," he added.
"People know, people don't know how powerful, actually. They have a lot of our equipment and they have a lot of great soldiers, and they really are somebody to be reckoned with. And the nice part is that because of the relationship that we have, it's all gone very well. I just want to say that I have a lot of respect for the president, and I think it's really to the benefit of both countries," Trump said.
At the Ankara meeting, Trump said Washington would lift the CAATSA sanctions imposed on Türkiye. "We don't want to sanction our friends," he said.
"I can tell you, we're going to be taking the sanctions off. OK? I don't want him to waste his time answering that question, because we're working very closely with Marco Rubio, a very famous man, great Secretary of State, and with Scott Bessent and with Pete and everybody else. We're going to be taking the sanctions off," he noted.
"It's time to do that. OK? You don't want to sanction friends. It's very simple. There's plenty of people we can sanction and we are sanctioning. We don't want to sanction friends," Trump said.
Trump also indicated a decision on the F-35 issue was forthcoming.
"It's a decision we're going to make, right? We have a very good relationship. I would think that many people, I can tell you, many people, including the people sitting right here, thinks, why wouldn't we do that? We have a better relationship with Türkiye, and Türkiye's been in many ways much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal," he said back then.
"So yeah, it's something, certainly we would consider. It's a great plane. It's the best -- currently, the best plane by far and it's certainly something we will consider. Yeah," Trump said at the time.
The Ankara meeting followed months of gradually improving U.S.-Türkiye relations.
Washington had removed Türkiye from the F-35 program in 2019 after Ankara's acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system, a step Türkiye has consistently disputed, arguing the S-400 and F-35 can coexist without conflict and that it fulfilled all its obligations under the program.
Ahead of the NATO summit, the New York Times (NYT) reported that Trump was expected to signal willingness to restore Türkiye's access to the F-35 program, though congressional and legal hurdles tied to the S-400 remained.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told Türkiye Today at the time that he supported a possible F-35 delivery to Türkiye, while acknowledging potential pushback in Congress, and described Türkiye as "a great ally and the only Muslim nation in NATO."
Trump had said before departing for the Ankara summit that he was attending "because of Erdogan," calling the Turkish leader "a friend" and "a respected leader."
A U.S. congressman said earlier this month that he believed Erdogan and Trump were likely to meet at the U.N. General Assembly, a prediction Barrack's announcement now appears to confirm.
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