Bipartisan letter from Congress to Biden calls to prevent sale of F-16 fighters to Turkey

US lawmakers have strongly urged the rejection of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in a bipartisan letter to President Joe Biden. 

“The sale would reward President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for ignoring Turkey’s alliance commitments to the US and NATO and the vast human rights abuses his regime continues to commit at home and abroad,” the letter read.

“The US must not support Turkey’s military until tangible steps are taken to stop Erdogan’s destabilizing actions and violations of international law” US Representative Frank Pallone said and added a copy of the letter signed by 35 US Congressmen in a tweet.

The Congress members in the letter expressed concern about Biden’s positive comments at the NATO Summit last month about the sale of new F16s and the modernization kits to Turkey and warned him that they would take every action to prevent it from moving forward.

Blaming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, South Caucasus, and North Africa for years, the lawmakers claimed that “Turkish and Turkish-backed forces have utilized American-made weaponry and components to commit war crimes, including purposefully bombing civilian targets like hospitals and schools in Iraq, Syria, and Nagorno Karabakh. They have also been used repeatedly to violate the sovereign territory of NATO allies and partners like Greece and Cyprus.”