Turkey’s objection on Sweden and Finland’s joining NATO and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent rhetoric have pretty much killed a deal with the U.S. Congress over the purchase of new F-16s, said Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle Eastern History at St.Lawrence University.
Before Ankara’s blocking Swedish and Finnish memberships, the chances of the F-16 deal to go were bettter than even, Eissenstat said in an interview with Nervana Mahmoud for Ahval podcast series, Turkish Trends.
There was a good chance that the Biden administration would be able to sell the deal as a national interest in Congress, but now, it’s hardly imagined, Eissenstat added.
“It strikes me how badly this is played in terms of Turkey’s desire to reset the relations with the United States.”
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Last year Turkey has made a formal request to purchase 40 of the latest F-16s and almost 80 modernisation kits for its existing warplanes from Lockheed Martin Corp, after Washington barred it from a programme to buy the F-35 stealth fighter jet and imposed sanctions on its defence procurement agency in response to its $2.5 billion acquisition of Russian S-400 air defence missiles in 2019. In a letter to Congress dated March 17, the State Department said a possible sale of the jets would be in the interests of the United States and NATO’s long-term unity.
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