Turkey postpones vote on Sweden’s NATO bid as lawmakers raise F-16 sale
The postponement is believed to have linked Ankara’s approval of Stockholm's entry into NATO to progress on its own bid to buy new F-16 fighter jets from the United States.
ANKARA — The Turkish parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday postponed voting on Sweden’s accession to NATO. The move is widely believed to signal Ankara’s expectations of progress in the Turkish bid to buy new F-16 jets from the United States.
The committee debated Sweden’s NATO accession for hours but postponed the vote to its next meeting, for which no new date has been set.
As they were debating the sufficiency of the steps Sweden took to address Ankara’s national security concerns, some lawmakers raised Turkey’s pending request from the United States to purchase 40 new F-16 fighter jets and roughly 50 modernization kits to upgrade 79 fighter jets in its inventory.
The Biden administration greenlit the bid, but the US State Department has yet to submit formal notification to Congress on the sale amid congressional opposition to it.
