Washington agrees to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey

Ending months of negotiations, the US government on Friday, January 26, approved the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Turkey, as well as F-35s to Greece, a move ratified this week by Sweden’s Ankara. Membership in NATO.

The sale calls for Turkey to buy forty new F-16s and Greece to buy 40 F-35s for $8 billion (7.36 billion euros), the Department of Defense announced.

It later on Friday afternoon formally notified Congress of the double sale as required by US law, a US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

To do this, the United States waited until the documents for Turkey’s ratification of Swedish membership in NATO were physically deposited in Washington, the official said, testifying to the ultra-sensitive nature of the ongoing negotiations on this agreement.

As depositaries of the North Atlantic Treaty, all instruments of ratification must be deposited in the federal capital, which will host a summit in July to mark the 75th anniversary of the Atlantic alliance. American law also requires that Congress be notified of any sale of American weapons to a foreign government.

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Turkey approves Stockholm’s NATO membership

The F-16 affair for Turkey, which needs them to modernize its air force, is a long saga that has punctuated talks between the United States and Turkey in the wake of Sweden’s bid for the Atlantic alliance.

Turkey’s parliament approved Stockholm’s annexation on Tuesday, ending twenty months of negotiations that have tested the patience of Ankara’s Western allies eager to form a united front against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led the standoff, first demanding a series of reforms from Sweden and then stipulating the simultaneous sale of American F-16 planes.

To satisfy Ankara’s demands, Sweden amended its constitution and adopted a new anti-terrorism law, Turkey accused Sweden of leniency towards Kurdish militants who had taken refuge on its soil, some of them considered terrorists by Ankara.

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Sweden announced its candidacy for NATO in May 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, at the same time as Finland, which became the organization’s 31st member in April 2023.

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Opposition to elected representatives of Congress

If the US government has always favored the sale of F-16s to Turkey, elected representatives of Congress – especially Democrats – have opposed it and blocked the file, citing Turkey’s negative human rights record and tensions with Greece. They directly linked the agreement to Turkish ratification. As a result, the Biden administration held off notifying Congress until Friday.

Ben Cardin, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, announced his agreement to the sale in a press release issued Friday evening, stressing that he “This decision was not taken lightly.”. Congress has the power to block it by passing a joint resolution but no one expects it, the condition for ratifying Swedish membership has now been removed.

The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, led an intense diplomatic sequence between Athens and Ankara to obtain this agreement, which, after the earthquake in February 2023, repeated three times to the Turkish President, during his trip to Ankara. , according to the official, there will be no aircraft without ratification.

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F-35s to Greece

The agreement first required Athens to commit not to block sales, and according to this source, Athens was simultaneously given more advanced F-35s.

Athens strongly opposed the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara due to long-standing territorial disputes with Turkey in the energy-rich eastern Mediterranean region.

This new expansion of NATO, however, is not completely over. Hungary has yet to ratify Swedish membership, despite promises from Budapest that it will not be the last country to give the green light. “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has once again shown that he is the most unreliable member of NATO”.Senator Ben Cardin expressed his condolences.

In Washington, they say they expect it to take a few more weeks but Hungary is committed to moving forward, making it possible to envision a flag-raising ceremony during the next ministerial meeting. NATO, at its headquarters in Brussels, in April.

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The world with AFP