After President Tayyip Erdoğan signed and sent the approval for Sweden’s NATO membership to the Turkish Parliament, U.S. President Joe Biden also notified Congress for the sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets and 79 upgrade kits to Türkiye for $23 billion. A 15-day process has commenced. To prevent the opposition in Congress from blocking the
“If we had not been there, the organization’s attacks on our borders would have continued as before and we would have paid a higher price in our own cities,” Yaşar Güler said on January 16 as he and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan briefed the Turkish Grand National Assembly in response to the PKK attack to
Türkiye’s Ambassador to Washington, Murat Mercan, announced this week with a message posted on social media that his stint will end due to his retirement age and that he will leave the capital on January 12. As of January 13, Türkiye will be represented at a charge d’affaires in Washington and Türkiye will have no
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Jan. 6 in Istanbul as a part of his week-long diplomatic tour amidst escalating tensions in the Middle East, particularly in the context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The high-level meeting attended by Fidan, National Intelligence
The Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee announced on December 22 that it has added Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to their December 26 meeting agenda. The Foreign Affairs Commission announced on December 22 that it has included the “Proposal for a Law on the Approval of the Ratification of the Protocol on the Accession of the
Yesterday, on December 14, there were two important developments that show that Türkiye’s relations with both the United States and the European Union have become even more strained over the common denominator of Sweden’s NATO membership. One was the EU leaders’ summit’s acceptance of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia as candidate members, and the other was
US Vice President Joe Biden has stated that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is losing international support due to its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. It would be naive to believe that this will prevent the Israeli government from carrying out its inexorable campaign against the Palestinian people. Especially because Biden approved the emergency sale
It would be a geostrategic fallacy to see US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s November 2-10 tour of the Middle East and Asia as solely about the Gaza Crisis. Likewise, it would be an exaggeration to say that the US and the European Union have put Ukraine aside because of its support for Israel, even
Turkish Ministry of National Defense announced that the Turkish Armed Forces conducted airstrikes against 30 targets in northern Syria as of 23:00 local time on October 5. “In order to eliminate terrorist attacks against our people and security forces from Northern Syria by neutralizing PKK/YPG and other terrorist elements and to ensure our border security;
When President Tayyip Erdoğan mentioned the possibility of Türkiye parting ways with the European Union on his way to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, no one from the EU has so far said “Don’t go, stay; we’ll give you what you want”. Perhaps there is an expectation among the Turkish President and