US President Joe Biden late last month agreed to allow Ukrainian pilots to train on F-16 jets, which elicited a snide remark from retired lieutenant general and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Herman Shuai (帥化民).
Shuai said F-16s are obsolete and if they were shot down by Russia’s S-300 and S-400 missile systems, it would undermine confidence in the countries possessing more than 4,000 F-16s around the world, including Taiwan.
As the F-16 is the main fighter jet in Taiwan’s air force, the arrival of 66 new F-16Vs in three years would mean that Taiwan would have the largest fleet of F-16s in Asia. It is apparent that anti-US narratives are spilling over into the military in the hopes of wreaking havoc on Taiwan-US military collaboration.
Perhaps no one knows more about the F-16’s exceptional combat power and performance than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who just sealed a re-election victory. As Biden made a congratulatory call to Erdogan, the Turkish leader used the opportunity to convey an essential matter: Ankara’s desire to buy F-16s.
Behind only the US and Israel, Turkey possesses the third-most F-16s in the world (Taiwan ranks fifth). In November 2015, two Turkish Air Force F-16s shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft near the Syria-Turkey border, the first time a Russian attack aircraft was downed by a NATO member.
Whether it is maintaining military balance with its rival Greece, or keeping a regional edge in Syria and Iraq, Turkey wants new F-16s and upgrades. The only hurdle in the way is the crisis-ridden US-Turkey relationship.
After an unsuccessful coup in 2016, Erdogan unleashed a sweeping crackdown on political opponents and dismantled human rights protections. To make matters worse, with the arrest of US pastor Andrew Brunson for alleged links to coup organizers, Turkey has exacerbated deep rifts between the two NATO allies. To hit back at Washington, Ankara put aside past grievances with Moscow to acquire S-400 missile systems, in the hopes of keeping the US in check with aid from Russia.
During former US president Donald Trump’s administration, Washington formally expelled Turkey from the US-led F-35 jet program after Ankara took delivery of a Russian air defense system over US objections. Erdogan then relented, claiming that it turned to Russia only because the US refused to sell it the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system. Turkey then made an official request to purchase 40 F-16s and nearly 80 modernization kits from the US.
Whether it was the Biden-Erdogan meeting at the NATO Summit in Madrid in June last year, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu’s visit to the US in January or US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Turkey after the earthquake in February, the F-16 sale has been at the heart of every discussion. It also ended up being an issue in the Turkish presidential election, where the opposition party claimed that the removal of Erdogan would ensure the procurement of F-16s.
The war in Ukraine has put Turkey into the geopolitical spotlight. As tensions between the US and Turkey ease, Erdogan has been earnest to show goodwill to Washington with the timely use of bargaining chips in a bid for the F-16 sale to move ahead. The US Congress’ approval of the sale finally came about two weeks after Turkey in April dropped its objections to Finland joining NATO. As for the 40 new F-16s, in view of next month’s NATO Summit in Lithuania, Ankara should expect yet another approval from the US Congress as soon as it ratifies Sweden’s NATO membership.
Chen Yung-chang is a company manager.
Translated by Rita Wang
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