Cleared for sale by US Department of State Turkiye of kits to modernize the fleet of f 16 it is a signal that should not be underestimated. The $259 million deal is part of a much larger game between Turkey and the United States in which fighter jet upgrades can only be seen as the first step.
Above all, Ankara and Washington have the upcoming sale of 40 new F-16s of the latest generation on the table. The agreement reached more or less definitively between the two governments was clogged by the US Congress. At least two souls have come together here, those of the anti-Turkish lobby, more powerful than the pro-Ankara, and those who, above all, consider it necessary to send a signal to Recep Tayyip Erdogan without the need to uplift his air fleet strengthen they are clarified relations with the Atlantic Alliance and especially its affairs with Moscow.
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The White House appears poised to move forward despite the disagreements between Joe Biden and Erdogan. But the US parliamentary quagmire is currently not easy to overcome, and it is not said that this is actually a real problem for the democratic administration, since the blockade of the F-16 can be a fundamental means of exerting pressure on the friend – enemy of Ankara .
Incidentally, it is no coincidence that the US government’s approval came two weeks after ratification by the Turkish parliamentaccession of Finland to NATO. Ankara’s veto has never been as solid as that against Sweden, which Turkey says is guilty of kinship with the PKK’s Kurds. But maybe that’s exactly the point of this first “okay” from Washington. The negotiation seems to be based on a classic “do ut des”, in which mutual concessions are based on the specific weight of the individual acts. The modernization of the Turkish F-16 with the transfer of kits and software went hand in hand with the launch in Helsinki in NATO. It is therefore possible, although not certain, that a further move towards the sale of the new 40 US fighter jets to Turkey will come if Erdogan gives the green light for Sweden to join the Atlantic Alliance. All this, also given the tricky race of the “Sultan” for re-election, could take place at least after May, so as not to supply Erdogan with propaganda weapons and at the same time support nationalist positions on the Turkish side.
Until the Sweden affair is resolved, the US kits will definitely include one breakthrough necessary for the Turkish Air Force, which is mainly characterized by Washington’s halt to its involvement in the F-35 program due to the purchase of the Russian S-400 system. Ankara has been particularly focused on overcoming this abrupt slowdown in the air program drones domestic production, as shown by the conversion of the aircraft carrier Anadolu into a kind of large naval platform for remote-controlled aircraft. At the same time, however, the F-16s are the backbone of the Turkish Air Force and it is vital for the country to modernize a fleet that is at risk of becoming obsolete.
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