“Sweden’s NATO membership is not a condition”: Biden continues to sell F-16 to Turkey

class=”sc-29f61514-0 kHgAwW”>

“It’s not a requirement,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. US President Joe Biden has made it clear for some time that he supports the sale of F-16 fighter jets. Jean-Pierre said selling the fighter jets to Turkey would make it easier for the defense alliance to work together. Following the re-election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Biden spoke to him and also expressed “his strong wish” that Turkey would approve Sweden’s application for NATO membership as soon as possible.

The US government has repeatedly stressed in the past that it will support Erdogan’s plan to modernize the fleet of F-16 fighter jets. At the same time, Biden regularly stressed that this was not a consideration for Erdogan’s support for NATO’s northern expansion. On Monday night, however, Biden gave the impression that these two things belonged together. Biden said: “I spoke to Erdogan and congratulated him. And he still wants to work on a solution for the F-16. I told him we want an agreement with Sweden. So let’s fix this.”

The sale of US fighter jets to Turkey has long been discussed: the NATO country was actually part of a program to develop the US fighter jet F-35 and should buy it. However, after the government in Ankara acquired Russia’s S-400 missile defense system in 2017, the US government excluded Turkey from the program. There were fears in Washington that Russia could use the S-400 weapons system’s sensitive radar to obtain data on the F-35’s stealth capabilities.

(SDA)

Source: Blick