ISTANBUL: Washington’s top diplomat will discuss the Gaza war with Turkiye’s leader on Saturday before flying to Crete to address Greek worries about the looming sale of US fighter jets to Ankara.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Istanbul late Friday for the first leg of a trip that includes visits to Israel and West Bank, along with five Arab states.
Blinken’s fourth crisis tour since the start of the Israel-Hamas war three months ago comes with fears mounting that the conflict will engulf swathes of the Middle East.
Erdogan began to tone down his most strident comments after US President Joe Biden last month called the Turkish leader for the first time since the war broke out.
The call helped push along NATO member Turkiye’s glacial progress in accepting Sweden into the US-led defense organization in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A parliamentary committee approved Sweden’s application in late December.
Blinken will hope to win assurances in talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Erdogan that a vote by the full chamber will happen soon.
Approval from all NATO states is required for new members to join the defense bloc.
NATO has already doubled the length of its border with Russia when Turkiye relented and accepted Sweden’s neighbor Finland into the alliance last year.
Erdogan has been able to use Turkiye’s veto power to impel Sweden into taking a tougher stance with Kurdish group in Stockholm that Ankara views as “terrorists.”
He has also been trying to make Sweden’s approval conditional on the US delivering 40 US F-16 fighters jets and nearly 80 modernization kits for Turkiye’s aging air force.
Biden’s administration officially backs the sale, but has been unable to overcome resistance in Congress from lawmakers who express alarm about Turkiye’s position on Sweden and its human rights record, as well as past military standoffs with historic rival Greece.
“We have made clear that we do not believe the sale… should be linked with Sweden’s NATO accession, but there are members of Congress who have a different opinion and they have linked the two,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said this week.
Blinken will travel to the Greek island of Crete on Saturday evening for talks with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Greece has fiercely resisted the US jet sales because of its longstanding territorial disputes with Turkiye in the energy-rich eastern Mediterranean region.
