If Turkey insists on transfer of advanced engine tech, B) won't help because non-Western players will guard their IP just as jealously. If it is prepared to accept A) however, why not reverse-engineer the F110, for which substantial know how is available locally?
Well, we disagree there. While all countries usually guard their secrets, I do think there ARE differences. The older the engine tech is - the greater chances there are that a high-enough sum of money will indeed buy tech transfer. For example, if there wasn't the issue of politics, RR might gladly sell RB199 tech to Turkey. (providing such engine class even works for Turkey). But since there ARE political frictions abound when it comes to military cooperation of other NATO countries and Turkey - such deals may still fall through.
On the other hand, as you yourself said, China and Russia do have a vested interest in pulling Turkey closer to them. So in light of that, a decision could be made to sacrifice a bit of technological edge by selling previous generation engine tech. If that'll help seal the deal.
Turkey seems to be gravitating towards F110 simply because it's the only thing they have access to right now. But they have to size up the design of the plane so it suits the engines. And if F110 turns out to be an illegal solution, sure it could power up some prototypes - but then what? Turkey needs hundreds of engines produced.
While F110 is claimed to be made in Turkey - how do we know just how much of it is actually made by Turkey? Is it final assembly? Or production of all parts? There could very well be subsystems that Turkey would be lacking.
https://asmedigitalcollection.asme....V002T02A020/2397636/v002t02a020-88-gt-305.pdf
Here it says, for example, that Volvo produced 35% of parts for RM12, while General Electric produced 65%. Even though it's usually claimed Volvo got the license for RM12, it apparently is far from a 100% license and full tech transfer. So I will allow myself to be sceptical of actual license that Turkey has to produce f110 completely on their own. In my opinion, there's a high chance they want to use ready made F110 just to power the prototypes. Despite what the US might say to that. But they may not have the means to produce further F110 in large numbers to power a whole future fleet of TFX fighters.
And if they tried completely reverse engineering F110 from scratch - well that's quite problematic. China tried it, and it took them basically 30 years to pull it off, with WS10 being the final result, mating all sort of technology in one final design. How long it might take Turkey is anyone's guess, depending on just how much they already know about F110, but it's still plausible we're talking a decade or two.
Of course, if the West does want to entice Turkey to keep away from Russia/China by dangling engine tech in front of it -that could work. But if that was SO important to the West, then none of the F-35 fiasco would have happened.
But please correct me if I'm wrong: By all I know about the TFX, it is aimed to be a fighter larger/heavier than a F-15 or broadly comparable to a Raptor. As such any engine below a F110 - and IMO even this is not powerful enough - like a EJ200, an F414, M88, RD-93 or WS-13 is anyway irrelevant. Or are you discussing an engine for the Hürjet?
TFX is, as far as I can tell, a very undefined project still. It started off as a medium class fighter. The fact they sought 90 kn thrust EJ200 shows as much. But since the F110 is the best thing Turkey can hope for at this moment, that may have pushed them to revise the design. Some sources still mention the 27 ton MTOW specification. If that IS true, then it's still a medium class plane somewhat. Of course, that may be just an old figure, back when EJ200 was in play. Interestingly, Avic's FC-31 MTOW figure was 28 tons. For a plane with two 90-100 kn engines.
I do believe TFX data will be changing in the future, as new developments on the engine front happen. Or, indeed, if they try to make it work with F110, then the plane will indeed be in the F-15 class.
But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to really fly, let alone enter service. Way too much uncertainty right now.
