The Biden administration told Congress it intends to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed off on Sweden’s accession to NATO on Thursday – a development that caps off more than a year of quiet, complicated negotiations.
The State Department sent the formal notification about the proposed $23 billion sale to Congress on Friday after Turkey’s instruments of ratification were formally deposited at the department. The State Department also sent Congress a formal notification of its intent to sell $8.6 billion worth of F-35s to Greece. Congress is expected to approve both sales.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was extensively engaged for months with Turkish officials and US lawmakers to reach the deal to stop Erdogan’s obstruction of Sweden’s NATO bid that would see Turkey receive the fighter jets – one of its top requests of the US.
When Sweden, along with Finland, first applied to join the defensive alliance in May 2022, Turkey sought to pull the US directly into the negotiations – a move the US rebuffed, according to a US official. However, the administration was cognizant the US had a key point of leverage – the F-16s – if that became necessary.
Once Turkey approved Finland’s accession in March 2023, Blinken worked intensely behind the scenes to try to get Sweden’s approval done by last summer’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
During a trip to Turkey in February 2023, Blinken met with Erdogan, who stressed the need for the US to give Turkey the F-16s before he would approve Sweden’s membership into the alliance. Blinken, in turn, told the Turkish president multiple times that members of Congress would not approve the sale of jets until Turkey allowed Sweden to join NATO.
It was at this point, the US official said, that the administration decided to leverage the jets more…
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