Erdogan Secures Nuclear Energy Deal With 'Valued Friend’ Trump

Via Middle East Eye

The US and Turkey have signed an agreement to begin cooperation on strategic civil nuclear energy development, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar announced after leaving the White House on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump had earlier teased a „major announcement” after meeting with his Turkish counterpart. The move is a win for Ankara, given President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not a popular figure in Washington under the previous Democratic administration.

Two former US officials told Middle East Eye earlier this week that Trump planned to discuss nuclear power and mineral deals with Erdogan. „We have started a new process that will further deepen the deep-rooted and multidimensional partnership between Türkiye and the United States in the field of nuclear energy. With the US Secretary of State, Mr. Marco Rubio, in the presence of the leaders after the meeting, we signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation,” Bayraktar wrote on X.

Via AFP

„I wish that the work to be carried out within the scope of the agreement will produce mutual benefits for both countries in the coming period.”

The US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, confirmed to reporters outside the White House that „the deal is done”. But there was more than one.

Shortly after Erdogan departed the Oval Office, the US State Department announced that it had facilitated the reopening of the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to resume Kurdish oil exports to Turkey.

That flow had been suspended since March 2023 because of disagreement over whether Iraq or the Kurdistan Regional Government ought to be collecting the revenue. „We welcome the announcement that the Government of Iraq has reached agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and international companies,” the statement said.

„This agreement will strengthen the mutually beneficial economic partnership between the United States and Iraq, encourage a more stable investment environment throughout Iraq for US companies, enhance regional energy security, and reinforce Iraq’s sovereignty”.

Friendship

When Erdogan returned to the White House for the first time since 2019 on Thursday, Trump wasted no time in doling out his praise, including a demand that Erdogan take credit for his „surrogates” who now lead a post-Assad Syria. „I have great respect for this man,” Trump told reporters.

„When I was exiled [because] of a rigged election – he knows about rigged elections better than anybody – when I was in exile, we were still friends. That’s always a good way to test a friendship,” Trump added of his 2020 election loss.

The two leaders have a litany of global issues before them. Turkey has been playing a mediating role between Russia and Ukraine, given its strategic location on the Black Sea, and has secured prisoner swaps between them in the past. Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin regard themselves as regional partners, and Trump has recently also reinvigorated his own connection to the Russian leader, although that has been tested in recent weeks.

Within NATO, Turkey’s military is only second in size to that of the US, but it is aggressively lobbying to get F-35s, one of the world’s most elite fighter jets. It it also in talks over F-16s or, at the very least, their engines, which can only come from the US.

Erdogan told Fox News this week that he does not perceive Hamas as a terrorist organization, but as a resistance group. He also said Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The Trump administration wholly disagrees on both points.

And in Syria, where US-backed Kurdish forces in the north are still a thorn in Turkey’s side, Erdogan’s backing of rebel forces led by now-President Ahmed al-Sharaa has reshaped the country and its trajectory, leading critics to warn Ankara may have too much control over Damascus.

„They’re your surrogates. I think you should take the credit for it,” Trump told Erdogan with dozens of reporters gathered around them in the Oval Office on Thursday. „Take the credit. For 2,000 years you’ve been trying to take over Syria,” Trump said, turning to the members of his cabinet and advisers in the room.

„He took over Syria, and he doesn’t want to take the credit… it was a victory for Turkey,” he added in the more brazen style of public diplomacy the world has come to expect from this US president. Trump said it was Erdogan – alongside the leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia – who asked him to lift decades-long US sanctions on Syria to allow a broken state to start anew.

„I don’t think they couldn’t have lived with those sanctions. I took them off to give them a chance to breathe, but the president was one of the people that was responsible for that. He asked me to do it,” Trump said.

Will Todman, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told MEE that the Trump Administration „has dedicated considerable diplomatic and political capital to the Syria issue, but it continues to signal that it will not fund Syria’s stabilization and does not want to play a large role in Syria in the longer term”.

Trump, he added, „wants regional actors, including Turkey and Arab Gulf states to fund Syria’s recovery”. But Erdogan remains nervous about clashing with Israel in Syria, Todman added, and „lacks the resources to be able to dedicate significant funds to Syria’s reconstruction and stabilization”.

When asked by a reporter how Trump feels about Erdogan’s opposing position to the US on Israel’s actions in Gaza, Trump said, „Well, I don’t know his stance. I can’t tell you about that.”

„I’ll just say that we want to get Gaza over,” he added. „I think we’re close to getting some kind of a deal done… we want to get the hostages back”.

Prior to his US trip, Erdogan described Trump as a „valued friend”. On Thursday, in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, he said the two of them have „managed to elevate the level of our relationship to a new horizon”.

„We discussed so many topics, particularly the F-16 and other issues. We will deal with them… We are always ready to do whatever we need to, and to be up to our responsibilities,” Erdogan said.

It’s no secret that the former Biden administration – and the Democratic Party on the whole – wasn’t as fond of Turkey’s record on what it described as undemocratic practices and human rights violations.

Trump: Rigged election. *points to Erdogan* He knows about rigged elections better than anybody. pic.twitter.com/aEMYYckJYp

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2025

Trump, on the other hand, has long seen Erdogan as an openly transactional partner like himself, and has often expressed admiration for leaders that embody what the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer described as „the character of strongman”. Trump said of Erdogan, „Usually I don’t like opinionated people, but I always like this one. He’s a tough one, and he does an amazing job in his country.”

Teasing F-35s

Turkey had been one of the main partners in the F-35 consortium and was responsible for producing certain components. The US currently holds six F-35s in storage that were built for Turkey and fully paid for, but have been in limbo since 2019. That’s because it was expelled from a co-production program after it purchased the Russian S-400 air defense system.

„He’s built a tremendous military, a powerful military [which] uses a lot of our equipment,” Trump added. „They wanna buy F-16s and F-35s and some other things, we’re gonna talk to them about that.”

Before the White House meeting, Turkey announced it was dropping some tariffs on US imports and leaked that it was planning to purchase hundreds of Boeing airliners and Lockheed Martin jets. „I think he’ll be successful with buying the things he’d like to buy,” Trump said, again appearing to tease a potential announcement.

„We’re going to be discussing the Patriot [missiles] system, which is the best system… We’re going to discuss the F-35,” was all Trump would give away to reporters on what the closed-door discussion would entail.

„We do a lot of business with Turkey. They build great products. They build beautiful, great products, really fantastic manufacturers, and we buy a lot from them, and they buy a lot from us”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally lobbied US Secretary of State Marco Rubio against the sale of F-35s to Turkey earlier this year. Dozens of US lawmakers have also said they oppose the sale, partly because of Turkey’s rivalry with Greece. Greece has already signed a deal to purchase 20 F-35s and has the option to purchase 20 more. Turkey is also looking to purchase 40.