WASHINGTON ― A key senator is refusing to lift his longstanding hold on the sale of 40 Block 70 F-16 fighter jets to Turkey despite the Biden administration’s announcement last week that it wants to maneuver forward with the deal. The $20 billion potential sale also includes 80 modernization kits.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the sale would proceed last week after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on the NATO summit in Lithuania that Turkey would ratify Sweden’s NATO accession bid. But Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told Defense News on Tuesday that he continues to make use of his position as Foreign Relations Committee chairman to dam the sale.
“I’ve at all times said that the ratification of Sweden, which should naturally occur, just isn’t the sine qua non of why I might lift the hold on F-16s,” Menendez said. “There’s greater issues than simply that alone.”
The U.S. State Department has held conversations with Menendez on his F-16 hold in recent weeks. Menendez told Reuters last week that if the Biden administration “can discover a technique to make sure that Turkey’s aggression against its neighbors ceases, which there was a lull the last several months, that’s great but there must be a everlasting reality.”
Greece lately has ceaselessly complained of Turkish incursions into its airspace, and Erdoğan is slated to attend the opening of a brand new airport in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus on Thursday.
Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded within the wake of a coup aimed toward union with Greece. Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence.
Turkey has also used F-16s in attacks on U.S.-backed Kurdish groups in northern Syria.
Further complicating matters, Erdoğan has said Turkey is not going to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership until October on the earliest since the Turkish parliament has a two-month summer recess in August and September.
Six members of the congressional Hellenic and Armenian caucuses sent a bipartisan letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week urging the Biden administration to connect “clear and substantive mechanisms to supply for the pause, delay or snapback” to the F-16 sale “if Turkey engages in actions that threaten or undermine U.S. national security interests and the unity of the NATO alliance.”
“While we welcome the current pause in Turkey’s destabilizing actions within the region, it can be crucial to emphasize the Erdoğan government has not modified policy,” they wrote within the letter led by Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H. “The impression that Turkey has improved relations with NATO ally Greece is belied by the incontrovertible fact that Ankara maintains a casus belli against Athens.”
Greece can also be pushing to affix Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter co-production program; the U.S. kicked Turkey out of it in 2019 after Turkey purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system. The U.S. fears the S-400 radar system could allow Moscow to spy on the stealth fighter jets. Each Turkey and Greece have lobbied against the respective U.S. aircraft sales sought by their neighbor.
Menendez’s home state of Recent Jersey boasts the sixth-largest Greek American population within the U.S. and the fourth-largest Armenian American population.
Despite his opposition to the F-16 sale, Menendez in April permitted a $259 million sale of avionics software upgrades for Turkey’s current F-16 fleet.
“I’m against F-16s, but this just isn’t a sale of F-16s,” Menendez told Defense News after the State Department approved the avionics kit sale. “It’s a sale to make sure the interoperability of existing aircraft within the NATO command structure, and for that reason I support it.”
Even when the F-16 sale eventually clears Congress, it’s unclear when Turkey would receive its latest aircraft as a result of a producing backlog for the in-demand jet.
For example, Taiwan can also be waiting on 66 F-16s, which is an roughly $8 billion portion of a broader backlog in overall U.S. arms sales to the Asian nation that has run as much as $19 billion.
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.