WASHINGTON: End\u00ading months of negotiations, the US government on Friday approved a $23 billion deal to sell F-16 warplanes to Turkiye, after Ankara ratified Sweden\u2019s Nato membership, the State Department said.
\nAs required by US law, the State Department notified Congress of the agreement, as well as a separate $8.6 billion sale of 40 F-35s to Greece. Turkiye will get 40 new F-16s and upgrades to 79 of the jets in its existing fleet, the State Department said in a news release.
\nThe United States did not green light the transaction until Turkiye\u2019s instruments of ratification of Sweden\u2019s membership had arrived in Washington, a US official said, highlighting the highly sensitive nature of the negotiations.
\nAll instruments of ratification must be deposited in the US capital \u2014 a city Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will visit next week, and which will host a summit in July to mark the 75th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
\nTurkiye\u2019s parliament ratified Sweden\u2019s Nato membership on Tuesday after more than a year of delays that upset Western efforts to show resolve in the face of Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine.
\nTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially objected to Sweden\u2019s Nato bid over Stockholm\u2019s perceived acceptance of Kurdish groups that Ankara views as \u201cterrorist\u201d organisations.
\nSweden responded by tightening its anti-terrorism legislation and taking other security steps demanded by Erdogan. But Erdogan then turned to an unmet US pledge to deliver a batch of F-16 fighter jets that has met resistance in Congress because of Turkiye\u2019s perceived backsliding on human rights and standoffs with fellow Nato member Greece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: End\u00ading months of negotiations, the US government on Friday approved a $23 billion deal to sell F-16 warplanes to Turkiye, after Ankara ratified Sweden\u2019s Nato membership, the State Department said. As required by US law, the State Department notified Congress of the agreement, as well as a separate $8.6 billion sale of 40 F-35s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60106,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100\/revisions\/60106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}