For decades, the F-16 symbolised Western control: American technology under alliance discipline. This week, that premise collapsed on a runway in Mogadishu, with Turkey flying F-16s of American origin into Somalia under a counterterrorism label.
That framing is the enforcement test. The issue is no longer procurement but operational doctrine: whether the United States and its allies still enforce the rules governing their own airpower, or whether those rules now exist only on paper, as Ankara shows it can reposition American combat aircraft into contested theatres at will, without restraint or consequence. The timing was deliberate.
Israel's recognition of Somaliland disrupted a balance that Turkey has spent a decade constructing in the Horn of Africa. Erdogan denounced the move within days. Diplomatic alignment followed. The arrival of fighter jets was the kinetic underpinnings. The audience is wider: Somaliland, potential followers, and Washington itself. This is why the F-16 problem is more corrosive than the S-400. One was a transaction. The other is operational doctrine directed at allies.
In the Aegean, violence has been normalised. Greek authorities have documented repeated infringements of sovereign airspace and aviation rules by Turkish military aircraft, including F-16s. These are not local allegations. The pattern is recorded across the Athens and Nicosia flight information regions and lodged at the United Nations, with Security Council and General Assembly documents detailing unauthorised activity. This is not a semantic quarrel over nautical miles. It is the systematic erosion of a NATO or European Union member state's air sovereignty by another NATO member, using platforms sustained by the United States.
The scale is the warning. During the war in Ukraine, Russian airspace violations of NATO states have been counted in single digits. Turkey's violations against a single ally run into the hundreds.
Over Cyprus, Turkey does not contest policy. It contests the map. Turkish F-16s have repeatedly entered Cypriot airspace and flight information zones without clearance, including low altitude passes near sensitive lines. When such aircraft also operate from the occupied north, this is no longer a marginal violation. It is sovereignty asserted by force, projected from territory the United Nations recognises as occupied. Airpower is laundered through occupation. That is why these incidents sit on the UN record: sustained aerial coercion, not episodic friction.
The same aircraft underpin Turkey's coercive campaign against Kurdish communities. In northern Syria and northern Iraq, F-16 strikes impose cross-border faits accomplis, often near populated areas, with civilian harm repeatedly reported. Inside Turkey, aerial intimidation has at times targeted provinces with a Kurdish majority, erasing the line between counterterrorism and collective punishment of Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin. Ankara calls this self-defense. In practice, it is airpower used to discipline a people, criminalise political identity, and enforce obedience from the air, replacing law with force.
Libya follows the same logic. Turkey intervened decisively in a civil war under contested agreements, violated international arms restrictions, and reshaped the balance of power on the ground. UN reporting and European monitoring missions have repeatedly flagged breaches of the Libyan arms embargo, enabled through air corridors and sustained airlift. Unmanned systems featured prominently, but the doctrine was unchanged: airpower as political engineering, not lawful defence of last resort.
Somalia completes the arc. For years, Turkey has built hard power there: a permanent military base, training missions, political alignment, and energy ambitions. The arrival of F-16s is not a counterterror episode. It is the exposed edge of an integrated project in which military presence, diplomatic pressure, and economic positioning converge under airpower.
This is where Western enforcement fails. In practice, end-use monitoring tracks custody, not operational use. Even United States oversight assessments acknowledge that existing mechanisms are not built to detect unauthorised operational employment of American defence articles. The gap is political, not technical, leaving misuse unproven, unclassified, and unpunished.
Leverage does not end at delivery. The Pakistan precedent proves it. Washington froze F-16 deliveries, conditioned sustainment, and tied monitoring directly to operational compliance. End-use enforcement was applied through maintenance, upgrades, and access.
The result is an alliance paradox bordering on self-sabotage. Turkish F-16s defend NATO airspace in Romania and Estonia, while Turkey's broader air posture treats Greek and Cypriot sovereignty as negotiable. The same aircraft. The same crews. The same sustainment. Defense in the east. Coercion in the south.
Legally, there is no ambiguity. United States arms transfers are bound to a purpose. Defence articles are provided for internal security, legitimate self-defense, and collective security under binding FMS agreements. End use is a condition. When American-origin F-16s are used for coercive overflights, systematic sovereignty pressure, and intimidation of partners, this moves beyond diplomacy and into a challenge to the foundations of the American arms transfer regime.
Washington has tools. Support can be conditioned or suspended, including upgrades, mission software, and sustainment. Congress has tested these levers, including in the Turkey-Greece context. The claim that delivery ends leverage does not survive scrutiny.
Europe is not a bystander. This is not a bilateral quarrel. Greek and Cypriot airspace constitutes Europe's external air border and NATO operational space. Ambiguity is the currency Ankara exploits. Removing it is a European responsibility.
The F-35 question is back, and the reflex is familiar: resolve the S-400 issue and keep Turkey anchored in the West. That reflex is wrong. The S-400 was a symptom. The core problem is operational doctrine. Turkey's future stealth fleet is not intended for confrontation with Russia or Iran, with whom Ankara maintains functional arrangements through energy, trade, Syria deconfliction, and the Astana track. Fifth-generation aircraft would instead be used where Turkey already applies pressure: over Greece and Cyprus, against other United States partners in the Eastern Mediterranean, and explicitly against Israel, including in Syrian airspace and the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel reads this pattern. Greece lives under it. On this trajectory, such an encounter increasingly reads as a matter of timing rather than contingency, and Jerusalem is adjusting its posture accordingly.
Mogadishu is the proof point. Western silence has become an operational capability. The issue is no longer F-35 access, but how quickly Turkish F-16s are denied operational viability. Relevant preparations are already underway.
This is why the F-16 story is the real F-35 story. It tests whether rules still apply when enforcement is inconvenient, whether alliance means shared defence or shared logistics, and whether sovereignty remains a principle rather than a bargaining chip.
Those who understand how Washington actually works know where this will be decided, not in presidential calls, but across Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the sustainment chain, with Athens and Jerusalem already there.
Shay Gal is an expert in international politics, crisis management, and strategic communications, working with governments and policymakers worldwide on power dynamics, risk, and high-level decision-making.
