By Safvan Allahverdi

WASHINGTON

The United States' concerns over Ankara's purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system are "political", a top Turkish defense official said Thursday.

Celal Sami Tufekci, Vice President of Turkey’s Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, recalled the U.S. proposal for the sale of Patriot air and missile defense systems valued at $3.5 billion to Turkey made in early January of this year.

"Our work on the S-400 goes back," before this proposal, Tufekci told Anadolu Agency following a think tank panel in Washington.

"We talked not only with Russia and the U.S. but also with many European countries. I believe that the United States expresses its concerns in terms of politics," he said. "I think they [the concerns] are the arguments that have been generated against Turkey."

Ankara is planning to purchase 100 F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. pending congressional approval. Thirty fighter jets have already been approved for purchase.

Washington, however, has expressed reluctance to accept Turkey's purchase of the S-400 system, saying the system might obtain confidential information on the fighter jets, including their detection range and operation mode.

Tufekci rejected the allegation that information on the fighter jets’ software would be obtained by the Russian missile system and said American and Israeli F-35 jets were easily flying over Syria where Russian radars are active.

"Technically, everything is possible, but Turkey will use its domestic software. We are a friendly country with the U.S.," he said, pledging that Turkey would not allow any information on the F-35 jets to go anywhere.

"We do not allow such a thing anyway," he added.

Turkey had been long trying to purchase the air defense system from the U.S. After finding no success, Ankara decided to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems in 2017.

*Servet Gunerigok contributed to the story