U.S. Senate and Administration Give Nod to F-16 Sales to Turkey

WASHINGTON – In a significant development, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has officially given his approval for the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, despite the Turkish government’s flawed human rights record domestically and its ties with questionable actors globally.

The State Department notified Congress of its approval of the $23 billion F-16 sale to Turkey after Turkey deposited its “instrument of ratification” for Sweden’s accession to NATO. The deal includes modernization kits for 79 existing Turkish F-16s and 40 new F-16s.

The Armenian Council of America continues to be deeply disappointed in Congress and the Biden Administration’s continued efforts to reward bad behavior by Turkish regimes. Erdogan’s regime attacks U.S. Kurdish allies, takes aggressive actions in the Eastern Mediterranean, is solely responsible for the division of Cyprus, and played a major role in Azerbaijan’s war crimes, human rights abuses, and attempts at ethnic cleansing against the native Armenian population in the region.