U.S. President Joe Biden in a phone call to recently re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on two issues — Turkey’s support of Sweden’s entry into NATO and the U.S. providing upgraded F-16’s “as soon as possible.” Biden said, “I spoke to Erdogan and he still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden. So let’s get that done.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the two issues were not linked despite Biden’s apparent implication that they were. Blinken said, “Both of these are vital, in our judgement, to European security. We believe that both should go forward as quickly as possible.” While Blinken said he doesn’t know when hold-outs Turkey and Hungary would approve Sweden’s membership, he was confident that it could be accomplished before NATO’s July Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
