ANKARA — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey will keep its promise to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession if Washington keeps its pledges to Ankara, including on the sale of the F-16 fighter jets.
Speaking on his way back from Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan bordering Turkey, Erdogan recalled that his Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his American counterpart Antony Blinken discussed Sweden's NATO accession during their meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly summit last Friday in New York.
“My hope is that if they stay true to their word, our parliament will also stay true to its word and will act accordingly,” Erdogan told journalists onboard without elaborating, according to the Turkish presidency’s Communication Directorate.
Asked whether he was referring to the pending Turkish bid to buy new F-16 jets and modernization kits from the United States, Erdogan said, “They are linking Sweden to the F-16s. … In turn, we say if you have a Congress, we have a parliament.”
