Zeynep Gizem OzpinarThe 36th NATO Summit in Ankara on July 7-8 pushed a long-suspended issue to the centre of Turkish-American relations: Türkiye's return to the F-35 programme.
This issue, a sour point in Washington-Ankara relations for years, appeared to be moving towards resolution after US President Donald Trump's remarks that "(we) don't want to sanction friends," setting off alarm bells in Athens.
A narrative that Greece has built in Washington for years now risks losing its footing.
At the centre of this narrative lies the claim that Turkish ownership of the F-35 would create "imbalance" in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Yet when the question is asked of who exactly is defending this claim, and with what record, the picture quickly reverses.
Greece's pressure in Washington does not stem from the size of its military or the scale of its economy; it is sustained by a political manipulation network institutionalised in the corridors of Congress and outside.
This strategy carries a fifty-year tradition for Athens: the pressure exerted by the Greek diaspora in the US Congress following the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation eventually pushed Washington into imposing an arms embargo on Türkiye in 1975.
Half a century later, Athens still prefers to activate the same political mechanism rather than balance Ankara through direct military capability.
For a country whose population and defence budget lag significantly behind Türkiye's, this has become virtually the only viable route.
The campaign now staged over the F-35 issue is simply the latest link in this deep-rooted Greek propaganda chain.
The Greek pressure network
The Greek lobby's discourse in Washington presents itself as “concern for alliance stability”.
Behind this discourse stands the Hellenic Caucus, founded in 1996 under the leadership of Carolyn Maloney and Michael Bilirakis, and now grown into one of Congress's largest bipartisan groups with more than eighty members.
Two Greek-origin figures hold its co-chairmanship: Republican Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Democrat Chris Pappas of New Hampshire. Nevada representative Dina Titus and New York's Nicole Malliotakis serve as vice co-chairs and act as the campaign's spokespeople.
Letters, draft bills and press statements bearing the signatures of these four consistently lock onto the same target: braking every step that would expand Türkiye's defence capacity, whatever the justification.
The campaign is not limited to the F-35 delivery; Titus's H.J. Res. 200, introduced in the House, also targets the planned General Electric engine sale for Türkiye's indigenous KAAN fighter jet.
The real aim here extends well beyond raising a genuine technical or legal objection, going towards an effort – though futile – to limit Türkiye's enviable military capacity.
Yet these initiatives are not confined to the individual efforts of Congress members. This political pressure is backed by a multi-layered influence network made up of diaspora organisations, political action committees and professional lobbying firms that have operated in Washington for decades.
The main reason the campaign resonates so strongly in Congress is that different actors take on complementary roles.
On the civil society front, the Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), the American Hellenic Institute (AHI) and the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) stand out.
HALC runs national campaigns encouraging American voters to contact Congress members directly, while AHI submits regular written testimony to Congressional committees and prepares reports on defence cooperation issues.
AHEPA, through its nationwide chapter structure and political action committee, reinforces the grassroots backing of this pressure network.
Ahead of critical votes concerning Türkiye, these organisations issue joint letters, run campaigns urging voters to reach out to Congress members and make direct contact with decision-makers in Washington.
In this way, grassroots campaigns, direct contacts within Congress and political donation mechanisms complement one another, forming an institutional influence network that advances Greece's priorities in Washington.
The historical development of these organisations is also notable for understanding the political line they follow. AHI was founded in 1974 by then US Deputy Treasury Secretary Eugene Rossides, in response to Türkiye's Cyprus Peace Operation.
Operating out of the Hellenic House building, AHI continues to submit regular testimony to Congress and prepare reports on defence cooperation.
AHEPA, founded in Atlanta in 1922, is one of the largest and oldest Greek-American organisations in the United States, with more than four hundred chapters.
Through its own political action committee, the organisation makes direct contributions to candidates, while its nationwide chapter structure allows it to mobilise thousands of volunteers capable of reaching Congress members at once.
An education fund exceeding four million dollars finances AHEPA's scholarship programmes for hundreds of students each year, sustaining the organisation's institutional capacity and long-term influence.
HALC's voter-based campaigns are also largely fed by this broad-based network.
The influence of these organisations does not stem from their broad membership networks alone. Publicly available financial records show that this influence is also backed by a sustainable funding structure.
According to IRS Form 990 filings, HALC's most recently declared annual revenue reaches $454,000, against expenses of $716,000. The bulk of its revenue comes from donations, pointing to the organisation's ability to generate steady resources through a wide network of supporters.
A similar financial structure is seen at AHI. The organisation supports its Washington activities through lobbying work and its educational foundation, AHI Foundation.
According to a filing with the US Senate Office of Public Records, AHI spent $32,000 on federal-level lobbying in 2024. According to AHI Foundation's publicly available IRS records, its annual revenue stands at roughly $1.1 million. The foundation supports the organisation's work through scholarships and research activities.
The organisation's president, Nick Larigakis, who joined AHI in 1987, has held the presidency since 2011 and remains one of the few diaspora representatives who submit regular written testimony to Congress's foreign aid committees.
Alongside this political and financial support provided by diaspora organisations, Athens also strengthens its influence in Washington by directly purchasing professional lobbying services. In February 2025, Greece's Foreign Ministry signed an annual contract worth $600,000 with BGR Group, a Washington lobbying firm close to Republican circles.
The contract, disclosed to the US Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), provides for strategic guidance and consultancy within government relations activities in the US, contact with relevant decision-makers and lobbying efforts concerning US-Greece bilateral relations.
BGR Group, for its part, is one of Washington's largest government relations and political consultancy firms, having generated $71 million in lobbying revenue in 2025 alone.
This choice shows that Athens has turned professional lobbying services, which provide direct access to decision-making mechanisms in the United States, into a foreign policy tool as well.
The Armenian National Committee of America's (ANCA) decision to join this coalition, citing Türkiye's support for Azerbaijan as its justification, exposes the real framework of the issue: a ground where various groups' political calculations converge, far more than any genuine NATO security concern.
Interestingly, this congressional pressure does not appear to find the same reception within the Trump administration. Given President Trump's statements at the NATO’s Ankara Summit and his intention to lift CAATSA sanctions, the course of events so far runs in Türkiye's favour.
One question remains: how far can Athens's so-called credibility criticism of Ankara hold up against its own record?
Athens's record undermines its own discourse
If the issue is genuinely alliance credibility, then Athens's own position must be weighed on the same scale.
As Ukraine sought Patriot munitions against Russian missile strikes, NATO and the EU asked Greece to transfer part of its batteries to Kiev. Athens rejected this request, citing its own deterrence needs.
A government that stayed non-committal at the most concrete test of alliance solidarity cannot conceal the contradiction embedded in its objection to another ally's arms purchase on security grounds.
This contradiction becomes even more pronounced where economic interests are concerned.
In the EU's latest sanctions package against Russia, Greece objected to restrictions on Russian liquefied natural gas shipping and delayed the package's approval; behind this objection lay the commercial interests of a Greek shipowning company transporting cargo from Russia's Yamal LNG facility.
While Türkiye's past S-400 purchase is presented as a sign of closeness to Russia, an ally providing a direct commercial channel for Russian energy exports is not met with the same sensitivity.
The credibility discourse, it seems, is a selective yardstick applied only against Ankara.
The heaviest blow came on the intelligence front. The exposure in February 2026 of a Greek Air Force colonel for leaking classified NATO information to China went on record as a major espionage scandal that dealt a direct blow to the alliance's internal trust architecture.
An earlier espionage investigation linked to Russia in Alexandroupoli, along with the leak of NATO-related information, points to a continuing pattern of operational security failures within Athens's counterintelligence structure.
Greek authorities' effort to present these incidents as "unrelated, isolated cases" is unconvincing; the succession of arrests reveals that preventive measures have fallen short and that responsibility extends to the highest levels.
A country whose own soldiers have carried NATO secrets to rival powers accusing Ankara of unreliability proves that this matter has ceased to be a genuine security debate and has turned into a political battle.
These examples alone are enough to invalidate, by Athens' own hand, the very credibility standard it champions in Washington.
Before questioning others' credibility, Athens should look in the mirror, confront its own record, openly acknowledge its vulnerabilities, and reassess its position within the alliance by acting transparently towards its NATO allies.
Otherwise, it will go down in history as NATO's unreliable ally.
