Mere hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greenlighted Sweden’s membership to NATO ahead of a key summit, Washington signaled it would move forward with the sale of the F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in consultation with Congress.
The first sign came from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who spoke with his Turkish counterpart Yasar Guler to “discuss support” for Turkey’s military modernization.
“They … discussed the positive talks between Turkey, Sweden, and NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, as well as the Department of Defense’s support for Turkey’s military modernization,” the readout from the Pentagon said. The Turkish statement echoed the same line but mentioned the F-16s explicitly.
Turkey wants to buy $6 billion worth of F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes. Though Ankara publicly says the sale of the fighter jets to Turkey was not quid pro quo for Ankara’s approval of Sweden’s NATO bid, Turkish and political analysts such as German Marshall Fund Turkey representative Ozgur Unlusarciklioglu maintain that the sale has been one of the crucial parts of a complex ascension agreement reached at the 11th hour at the Lithuanian capital.
The NATO press release on Sweden joining the alliance says Turkey and Sweden will continue cooperation against terrorism, pledging Stockholm’s support of Turkish-EU ties and economic cooperation with Ankara. In a thinly veiled reference to formal or informal arms embargoes to Turkey, it adds that the sides “commit to the principle that there should be no restrictions, barriers or sanctions” to defense trade and investment among allies. “We will work towards eliminating such obstacles,” it reads.
The Joe Biden administration gave a firm backing for the F-16 deal. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday before the NATO meeting that Biden put “no caveats or conditions” on the transfer and “intends to move forward with that transfer in consultation with Congress.”
On Monday, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, who has been a longtime critic of Turkey, also acknowledged that there was a temporary “lull” in Turkey’s “aggression against its neighbors,” in a reference to Greece. Tensions have run high between the Aegean rivals as their Western allies watched nervously throughout 2022, but Ankara and Athens managed to defuse tensions in post-disaster diplomacy. A week before the summit, the Turkish Defense Ministry said that the two countries would restart confidence-building talks, which were suspended after Erdogan lashed out at Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for lobbying Congress against military sales to Turkey. Tomorrow, the two leaders are expected to come together for a bilateral meeting — the first face-to-face after Erdogan “wrote off” Mitsotakis a year ago.
Menendez, a Democrat, said he was in talks with the Biden administration about the hold he’s placed on future US sales of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara and he could make a decision within the next week about the status of that hold. “If [the Biden administration] can find a way to ensure that Turkey’s aggression against its neighbors ceases, which there has been a lull the last several months, that’s great but there has to be a permanent reality.”
Menendez’s timeline matches some of the accounts from pro-government media outlets on the Turkish parliament’s approval of Sweden’s accession protocol.
According to speculation by some of the press accompanying Erdogan, the presidency will send the Swedish protocol to the Turkish parliament later this week and it would come before the Foreign Affairs Committee and then the Parliament’s General Assembly within the week. Ankara has not confirmed.
“On F-16s, they keep telling us that there is Congress to go through. Well, we have the parliament approval to think of [on Sweden’s membership bid],” Erdogan said Monday morning as he headed for NATO. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and its small nationalist ally, which have a majority in parliament, can hold up the vote or reject it if they chose to do so. Meanwhile, Sweden’s membership still has to be ratified by Hungary.
On Tuesday evening, Erdogan and Biden are expected to meet one-on-one in Vilnius.
Russia: ‘Turkey has obligations’
The Kremlin, meanwhile, said Sweden’s accession to NATO will definitely have “negative consequences” for Russia, but it was careful not to direct its anger toward Turkey. Speaking on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov stressed that Moscow understands Ankara’s obligations.
“Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. Turkey has its obligations; Turkey is committed to its obligations. This has never been a secret for us, and in this regard, we have never worn rose-colored glasses,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news outlets.
