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Turkey’s agreement this week to allow Sweden to join NATO, apparently in exchange for President Biden’s willingness to press ahead with Ankara’s long-delayed purchase of US-made F-16 fighter jets, may not be the end of the matter.
There’s another NATO member in the eastern Mediterranean that also wants to buy sophisticated American planes, and US lawmakers from both parties say one deal shouldn’t happen without the other.
Greece – Turkey’s longtime regional rival – wants F-35s, the most advanced US fighter jets, a purchase that has been in limbo. And although senior congressmen appear to have eased their opposition to Turkey’s F-16 bid after Ankara agreed to drop its objections to Sweden’s NATO entry, they have linked the two deals.
“I continue to have my reservations about the F-16,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (DN.J.) told the Washington Post this week following Sweden’s announcement at the Vilnius NATO summit , Latvia.
“But I’ve told the administration if they can show me… there was a lull [Turkey’s] belligerence against [Greece]”If you can show me the way in which Greece has a qualitative military lead,” he said, “there may be a way forward.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (Republican from Texas) agreed, as did senior Democratic members of both committees. “Chairman McCaul has said that if Greece gets the F-35, he could push for an upgrade of Turkey’s existing F-16s and that Washington must first ensure that Greece has a military advantage over Turkey,” McLaurine said Pinover, a spokeswoman for the majority committee.
President Biden has joined The two sales were broadcast on Sunday in a pre-summit interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “Turkey aims to modernize its F-16 aircraft. And [Prime Minister Kyriakos] Mitsotakis in Greece is also looking for help,” Biden said. “So, quite frankly, what I’m trying to do is sort of a consortium where we strengthen NATO in terms of both Greece’s and Turkey’s military capability and allow Sweden to get in. But that’s it.” …in the game. It’s not finished yet.”
The administration has said it supports both the F-16 and F-35 deals and sent them to Congress months ago for informal discussion before submitting them to lawmakers for formal approval. But since both gained additional political and foreign policy influence, this official submission never came about.
When asked when either or both would be formally filed — triggering a 15-day period for Congress to object — the White House declined to elaborate on Biden’s remarks. The Pentagon referred questions to the State Department, which is officially responsible for handling foreign military sales. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said only that “it’s in progress.”
Greek-Turkish feuds – dating back to Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century and before the founding of modern Turkey – have become the stuff of legends in NATO in recent times. Most disputes have revolved around air, sea and land control of the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, with a focus in recent years on energy fields and pipelines, the occupation of Aegean islands and responsibility for migrants arriving by sea from Africa and the Middle East came.
Less than a year ago, tensions between Athens and Ankara rose to the point where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to have threatened an armed response to the allegedly demilitarized Greek occupation of the islands. Mitsotakis said Turkey’s challenge to Greek sovereignty was “absurd”.
The uproar led to the cancellation of a planned meeting between the two leaders, who avoided each other until they finally met in Vilnius on Wednesday. There, in a very different tone to his comments on Athens last year, Erdogan later told reporters that they were talking about how they could “strengthen their friendship”.
Erdogan said he was “hopeful” that the United States would supply Turkey with F-16 planes, adding that their delivery posed no threat to Greece.
The meeting capped a slow process of normalizing relations that has been underway in recent months, beginning with public sympathy and humanitarian assistance from Greece following February’s devastating earthquake in southern Turkey.
The normalization process “was seen primarily as a factor in Turkey’s broader effort to improve relations with the West,” said Berkay Mandiraci, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Mitsotakis, who was re-elected last month, said he and Erdogan had “reaffirmed our common will to restart our bilateral relations again, to start carefully again” and that they would meet again in the autumn.
“Of course, not all outstanding issues have been resolved,” he said, “but the intention is to review the framework of our relationship from a positive point of view.”
As part of a major defense modernization, Greece has purchased 24 Rafale fighter jets and upgraded its existing F-16 fleet. The company also plans to purchase 20 F-35s, with an option for up to 28 more.
For Turkey, an improvement in relations with Greece is seen as desirable, not only to attract Western investors at a time when its economy is suffering, but also to signal to the “political elite in Europe that this is a different era — a departure from what.” “They saw it as escalating rhetoric and action,” defined by Erdogan’s scathing nationalism in the period before May’s elections brought him another five years in office, Mandiraci said.
A small but active Greek-American presence in Congress, along with Erdogan’s crackdown on political opposition, dissenters and the media, have compounded the contempt that many MPs hold for him. It has been growing since Turkey signed a $2.5 billion deal to buy Russia’s S-400 air defense system in 2017.
This deal drew sharp criticism from NATO and Washington’s suspension of Turkey’s participation in the F-35 production and purchase programs and other defense contracts. These sanctions are still in place.
Providing US warplanes to both countries would not necessarily spoil the current atmosphere of normalization between them. But Greece’s ownership of America’s most advanced aircraft, if Turkey continues to be denied it, could be a concern for Ankara “not now, but in 10 to 15 years,” Mandiraci said, according to some defense analysts.
It is impossible to predict whether Turkey will have settled its differences with the US over the purchase of Russian air defense systems by then, or whether there is a way to do so Re-enter the F-35 program. For now, following his re-election, Erdogan appears to have concluded that he has little to gain by continuing the feud with either Washington or Athens.
Although both Turkey and Greece are aware of the “cost of a serious escalation,” Mandiraci said their current rapprochement, as it stands, will not necessarily accelerate given the pressure Erdogan is facing from nationalist partners in his ruling coalition .
“The leeway he has to make significant concessions is relatively small,” he said.
Fahim reported from Istanbul. Emily Rauhala and Michael Birnbaum in Vilnius and Leigh Ann Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.
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