“This is true for countries like us, which struggle for survival on different fronts at the same time. We are a country that has suffered a lot of foreign dependency in terms of weapons, ammunition and military equipment in our recent history. We remember the embargoes we faced due to our Cyprus Peace Operation just like yesterday. In this period, we could not even take back the F-35 aircraft we sent for periodic maintenance, let alone receive the aircraft we paid for in advance. In fact, we had to pay a storage fee for aircraft that were not delivered to us for years.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan January 2021