Turkey will get its long-awaited F-16 fighters in exchange for unlocking NATO involvement

Turkey has achieved its goal: in exchange for unlocking the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, it will get the United States to sell it more F-16 fighter-bombers, capable of carrying atomic bombs (a type of weaponry that Ankara lacks). . Washington, in return, will ask Turkey to limit or suspend its military operations in its neighboring countries, especially in Syria, where it occupies a strip of land to the north to fight the Kurdish minority, a part of which helps the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in that nation.

This was stated by the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, just a few hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lifted the veto on Sweden’s accession to the Atlantic Alliance. In statements in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where the NATO summit opens today, Sullivan explained that the White House will direct a request to the Pentagon to authorize the sale of these fighter-bombers to Turkey and the modernization of the other 243 with which Ankara account. Sullivan has not gone into details about whether the US will deliver the 40 F-16s that Turkey has been asking for for years or less, nor the model of the aircraft.

In the last weeks, Ankara has accelerated its progressive alignment with kyiv in the war, which could have helped the sale. Turkey has handed over to Ukraine the leaders of the defense of the Azovstal steelworks, in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, who resisted the Russian siege for months, thus enraging Moscow. In addition, it has opened a factory in Ukraine to produce Bayraktar drones, whose manufacturing company, Baykar, was founded and is run by Erdonagn’s son-in-law. The Bayraktar were instrumental in the early months of the war, though their effectiveness has been greatly diminished by Russia’s adoption of electronic warfare measures against them.

Turkey and Ukraine have also reached an agreement for the former to supply the latter with heavy artillery manufactured under license from South Korea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has described both decisions as “destructive”. But the criticism does not seem to have hit Erdogan, as Turkey has stated that if Russia withdraws from the agreement for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, its Navy will be in charge of guaranteeing the safety of the merchantmen participating in the program. .

It seems highly unlikely that the US Congress will oppose the sale. First of all, although the F-16 is an extraordinarily capable aircraft, which has made history in the world of aviation, it is relatively old, since it is a fourth generation aircraft and currently the most advanced aircraft – the American F-22 and F-35 and Chinese J-20 – are fifth generation (Russia has a fifth generation aircraft, the Su-57, but it doesn’t seem to have more than a few prototypes to show off in the photo) .