WASHINGTON — Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with his US counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington on Wednesday to secure a $20 billion arms sale, the 40 Lockheed Martin Block 70 F-16 fighter jets and upgrades to the current ones Turkey’s F-16 fleet.
But the US State Department has yet to formally notify Congress of the potential deal, and a key senator has vowed to prevent it from proceeding.
If the sale is approved by Congress, Turkey may have to wait a long time to receive the new jets amid an F-16 production backlog.
Senator Bob Menendez, DN.J., has repeatedly said he will use his position as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to block the sale and has shown no sign of backing down.
“I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s proposed sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey,” Menendez said in a statement. “President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan continues to subvert international law, disregard human rights and democratic norms, and exhibit alarming and destabilizing behavior in Turkey and towards neighboring NATO allies.
“Until Erdogan stops his threats, improves his human rights record at home – including by releasing journalists and the political opposition – and starts behaving as a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale.”
However, it remains to be seen how quickly F-16 maker Lockheed Martin can build these jets for Turkey.
“We have a significant backlog for F-16s,” said Erin Moseley, vice president of strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, in an interview with Defense News in July 2022 at the Farnborough Airshow in England. Moseley also said international customers were showing “massive interest” in purchasing new F-16s.
Jay Malave, Lockheed’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call on the results last summer that the F-16 backlog stands at 128 fighters. For example, Taiwan is also awaiting 66 F-16s, accounting for about $8 billion of a broader backlog in total US arms sales to the Asian nation, which now exceeds $14 billion.
Malave also said on the conference call that Lockheed has ramped up its F-16 production facility in Greenville, South Carolina, with nearly 50 employees moving from another area of the company. Lockheed has been building F-16s for overseas customers in South Carolina since 2019, when it moved that production line from Fort Worth, Texas.
Lockheed Martin forwarded Defense News’ inquiries to the US government.
F-35 for Greece?
Menendez praised another major arms sale involving Lockheed Martin: a pending deal for Greece to buy 20 F-35As. Greece and Turkey continue to lobby the US for the other country to receive fighter jets amid ongoing tensions between the two NATO members.
“This defense capability is not only critical to the efforts of a trusted NATO ally and enduring partner to advance security and stability in the eastern Mediterranean, but also strengthens our two nations’ abilities to defend common principles, including our collective defence, democracy, human rights.” and the rule of law,” Menendez said of the potential F-35 sale to Greece.
Menendez’s home state of New Jersey has the sixth-largest Greek-American population in the US and the fourth-largest Armenian-American population, making Turkey particularly unpopular with some of his constituents.
The US State Department has yet to formally notify Congress of the sale to Greece, which is also seeking to join the F-35 co-production program.
The US kicked Turkey out of that program in 2019 over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. The US government had cited concerns about the system’s advanced radar and the possibility that its presence in Turkey could allow Russia to spy on F-35 stealth fighters.
Rep. Frank Pallone, DN.J., a member of the Hellenic Caucus in Congress, also issued a statement on Wednesday blowing up the Biden administration’s proposed sale of F-16s to Turkey. He promised to work with Menendez to prevent the deal.
More specifically, he highlighted Erdoğan’s “caustic rhetoric pleading for the invasion of Greek and Cypriot territories and encouraging illegal overflights by Turkish jets”. He also accused the Turkish president of “holding the Finnish and Swedish applications for NATO membership hostage until his absurd and unrelated demands are met.”
The State Department is in talks with Congress about the potential sale of F-16s, but Department spokesman Ned Price declined to disclose the Biden administration’s private discussions with lawmakers. But Price pointed to the overwhelming support on Capitol Hill for Finland and Sweden to join NATO — a membership bid that Erdoğan has blocked when he calls for the extradition of political dissidents whom Turkey describes as terrorists, including several Kurds.
“Our partners on the hill, at least some of them, have made no secret of their opposition to it,” Price told Defense News at a US State Department news conference on Wednesday, in response to a question about the F-16 sale. “We encourage Turkey, Finland [and] Sweden must find a way to achieve what we would all like to see, namely the rapid accession of Finland and Sweden as NATO’s newest allies. There is strong support within the Alliance…there is strong support within the US Congress for Finland and Sweden to become the newest members of NATO.”
To make matters worse, the Turkish government has repeatedly threatened to launch another full-scale offensive against US-backed forces in northeastern Syria ahead of Turkey’s presidential election in May.
The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Council last year lobbied the Biden administration and Congress against the sale of fighter jets to Turkey, noting that Ankara has used F-16s to attack civilian infrastructure in northeastern Syria.
Bryant Harris is a congressional reporter for Defense News. He has been reporting on US 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.
Stephen Losey is an air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at the Air Force Times and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover US Air Force operations.