Ankara [Turkey]: US President Joe Biden has promised to make all efforts to convince the US Senate to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. In October, Erdogan said that the US offered Turkey to purchase F-16 jets after Ankara was excluded from the F-35 supply program. “Biden said: ‘We may not get results in a very short time. You know, the process goes through two different stages: the House of Representatives and the Senate. You know, the situation is 50-50, but I will do my best.’ And I told him, ‘I believe you can handle it,” Erdogan told reporters.
Earlier on Monday Erdogan said that he did not travel to the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow as Ankara’s request related to safety protocol standards was rejected. “There were some safety protocol standards that we requested for the UN leaders’ summit on climate change in Glasgow … standards that were always applied to us and all the other leaders in all of our international visits. However, at the last moment we were told that our requests cannot be satisfied. We learned later that the standards described in our rejected request could only be secured for another country … We could not accept this,” Erdogan told reporters.
