After months of negotiations, the American government gave the green light on Friday, January 26, to the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey and F-35 fighter jets to Greece, after Ankara ratified Sweden's membership in NATO this week had .
The sale includes the purchase of forty new F-16s by Turkey and forty F-35s by Greece for an amount of $8 billion (7.36 billion euros), the Defense Ministry said. As of Friday.
The latter officially informed Congress of this double sale late Friday afternoon, as required by American law, an American official who requested anonymity told reporters.
To this end, the United States waited until Turkey's instruments of ratification of Sweden's NATO membership were physically deposited in Washington, this official said, attesting to the extremely sensitive nature of the negotiations surrounding that agreement.
As depositary of the North Atlantic Treaty, all ratification instruments must be deposited in the federal capital, where a summit meeting will take place in July to mark the 75th anniversary of the Atlantic Alliance. American law also requires that Congress be informed of any sale of American weapons to a foreign government.
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Turkey agrees to Stockholm's NATO membership
The F-16 affair for Turkey, which it needs to modernize its air force, is the story of a long saga that shaped discussions between the United States and Turkey in the wake of Sweden's candidacy for the Atlantic Alliance.
Turkey's parliament approved Stockholm's entry on Tuesday, ending 20 months of negotiations that tested the patience of Ankara's Western allies seeking to form a united front against Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led a stalemate by first demanding a series of reforms from Sweden and then setting a condition for the simultaneous sale of American F-16 aircraft.
To meet Ankara's demands, Sweden reformed its constitution and passed a new anti-terrorism law. Turkey accused Sweden of leniency towards Kurdish militants who had sought refuge on its soil, some of whom Ankara considered terrorists.
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Sweden announced its entry into NATO in May 2022, in the wake of Russia's 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 from elected members of Congress
While the American government has always supported the sale of F-16s to Turkey, elected representatives in Congress – particularly Democrats – have opposed it and blocked the dossier on the grounds that the human rights situation in Turkey is negative and there are tensions with Greece . They had linked this treaty directly to Turkey's ratification. As a result, the Biden administration had refrained from notifying Congress until Friday.
The influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, agreed to the sale in a press release issued Friday evening, emphasizing that he “did not make this decision lightly.” Congress has the power to block it by passing a joint resolution, but no one expects this as the condition of ratification of Swedish membership has now been lifted.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken led an intensive diplomatic sequence between Athens and Ankara to reach this agreement, even repeating it three times to the Turkish president during a trip to Ankara, shortly after the February 2023 earthquake, that there would be no aircraft without ratification would give, said the official.
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F-35 for Greece
The agreement initially required Athens to commit not to impede sales, and Athens simultaneously received more advanced F-35s, according to this source.
Athens had long fiercely denied the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara due to territorial disputes with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean, which is rich in energy resources.
However, this new expansion of NATO is not yet fully completed. Hungary must still ratify Sweden's membership, although Budapest has promised not to be the last country to give the green light. “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has once again shown that he is the most unreliable member of NATO,” complained Senator Ben Cardin.
Word in Washington is that it is expected to take a few more weeks, but that Hungary is determined to move forward, making it possible to imagine a flag-raising ceremony during a next ministerial meeting. NATO at its headquarters in Brussels in April.
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