ANKARA: Turkiye is confident its long-awaited $6 billion deal to buy F-16 fighter jets will go ahead after the US House of Representatives introduced an amendment to the annual defense budget bill removing a series of hurdles to the sale.
On Tuesday, lawmakers in the US Senate and House reached an agreement on the annual defense policy bill.
The Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act is set to pass by the Senate and House of Representatives this month before being sent to the White House.
In October 2021, Turkiye made a request to the US to buy 40 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets and about 80 modernization kits to update its existing fleet. However, Washington so far has refused to give a “green light” on the sale, saying that it needs to follow the standard process.
“The removal of articles that tied the sale of fighter jets to Ankara with restrictive conditions from the NDAA draft eliminated an important roadblock for Turkiye’s purchase of 40 new F-16s and 80 F-16 modernization kits from the US,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara office director of German Marshall Fund of the US, told Arab News.
In a letter written to Congress in March, the State Department said the potential sale of the jets and modernization kits to Turkiye would strengthen bilateral ties and NATO’s long-term unity.
“The administration believes that there are nonetheless compelling long-term NATO alliance unity and capability interests, as well as US national security, economic and commercial interests that are supported by appropriate US defense trade ties with Turkiye,” the letter said.
Sentiment toward Turkiye in the administration of US President Joe Biden had softened after Ankara’s mediation efforts during the Ukrainian conflict and thanks to its normalization policy with former rivals, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
In an interview with the CNN Turk broadcaster last month, Turkiye’s presidential spokesperson, Ibrahim Kalin, said that US approval for the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkiye could be completed in a month or two.
In August, a Turkish technical delegation met in Washington with experts and authorities from Lockheed Martin, while another political delegation along with Turkish diplomats also conducted lobbying activities in the US.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met two US senators — Lindsey Graham and Chris Coons — in New York in September to seek their potential support for the sale.
However, the proposed sale of US weapons to Turkiye has been subject to intense debate after Ankara bought Russian-made defense missile systems, which resulted in its removal from the F-35 fighter jet program along with several US sanctions on its defense sector.
Democratic Senator and Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Robert Menendez said on Wednesday that he will not approve the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkiye and that the final text of the NDAA was not “a win” for Ankara.
According to Sine Ozkarasahin, a security analyst at the Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, the Biden administration is using its political capital to move the debate in a positive direction.
“But there are still many hurdles to be overcome for a potential agreement, and persuading skeptical senators such as Menendez is the most significant of all,” she told Arab News.
The explanatory text accompanying the NDAA bill emphasized that “NATO allies should not conduct unauthorized territorial overflights of another NATO ally’s airspace,” considered by many experts as a warning to the overflights in the Aegean that trigger disagreements between Ankara and Athens.
“Those in the US Congress that want to prevent the transaction have other means to do so, but in return the administration has ways to overcome or circumvent their objection,” Unluhisarcikli said.
“In line with the Arms Export Control Act, US President needs the Congress to not formally object to the transaction. Accordingly, the president needs to notify the Congress 30 days before formalizing a defense sale to a third country, and 15 days in the case of allies including Turkiye,” he added.
Unless Congress adopts a joint resolution of disapproval within those 15 days, the president can sign off the deal.
According to Unluhisarcikli, Congress has never prevented an arms sale through this channel in the past and, given its workload, it is not an easy task to adopt such a resolution in a short time.
“However, there is also a practice in the form of the State Department informally notifying the Congress 20 days before the president’s formal notification. If there are strong objections in the Congress after the informal notification, then the president is unlikely to make the formal notification,” he added.
If the deal to buy F-16 fighters falls through, Ankara may consider other options, including Eurofighters, Swedish Saab fighter aircraft or the latest generation of Russian or Chinese fighters.
“However, Turkiye’s regional rivals, like Greece, are rapidly modernizing their air forces while Ankara remains stuck in the fourth-generation air warfare model,” Ozkarasahin said.
“In the aftermath of its removal from the F-35 program and the changing power balances with its geopolitical rivals, Turkiye urgently needs a stopgap solution until its national combat aircraft takes to the skies.”
The first prototype of Turkiye’s indigenously built fighter jet TF-X recently arrived on the final assembly line. The aircraft is estimated to be rolled out in March 2023 and make its first flight in 2025 or 2026.
Ankara expects US ‘green light’ for F-16 sale
https://arab.news/gpwjh
Ankara expects US ‘green light’ for F-16 sale
- Turkiye’s regional rivals, including Greece, are rapidly modernizing their air forces, analyst tells Arab News
- The Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act is set to pass by the Senate and House of Representatives this month before being sent to the White House
Egypt braces for second summer of power cuts as gas supplies dwindle
- The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running
CAIRO: Among the bustling workshops of central Cairo’s Al-Sabtiyah district, Om Ghada’s blacksmith business has seen profits dip as two-hour power cuts each day returned after a brief suspension during the holy month of Ramadan.
When scheduled outages began last summer it came as a shock to Egyptians accustomed to years of reliable power supplies under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the government promised they would be temporary.
But supplies of the natural gas that helped generate an electricity surplus are dwindling and the power cuts are back.
The outages “create a lot of obstacles and cut into my profit,” said Om Ghada, as sparks flew from a metal cutter nearby. She owns the workshop, which is among dozens in the area that rely on electricity to power machines.
“One customer yesterday waited two hours, until they became impatient and left,” she said.
While Egypt recently secured record investments from the United Arab Emirates and an expanded IMF program, easing a foreign currency crisis, power cuts are a reminder of underlying economic challenges.
The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running. The government initially blamed them on high temperatures, but they continued through 2023 after summer ended even after the government paused exports to meet demand.
Egypt has been seeking a role as a regional energy exporter, eyeing electricity sales to countries including Saudi Arabia and Libya, planning an interconnector to Greece, and shipping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) cargoes from two liquefaction plants.
But development of renewables has been halting and gas supplies are in doubt because of a lack of large discoveries since the giant Zohr field in 2015. That pushed gas production in 2023 to its lowest level since 2017, and the government recently started importing LNG cargoes.
Officials have blamed power cuts on rising demand from a growing population of 106 million, mega-projects backed by El-Sisi, and urban development.
Cuts to electricity subsidies have been slowed as the economy came under pressure in recent years.
Egypt’s electricity ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SALES DOWN
The power cuts were suspended over Ramadan and the Eid holiday that followed, and local media said they would also be halted for labor day and spring holidays going over this weekend. But they are sometimes hard to predict and are hurting small businesses that play a crucial role in an economy where growth has slowed and is expected to ease to 2.8 percent in the current financial year ending in June, from above 4 percent last year.
Ahmed Hussein, an air conditioning technician in Al-Sabtiyah, said daytime power cuts reduced productivity by 40 percent. South of central Cairo in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, Essam said sales at the dessert shop where he works were down 30 percent since the regular power cuts began.
“As long as there’s no electricity there are no sales. The safe and the till aren’t working,” Essam, who didn’t give his last name, said. “Customers can’t see anything.”
Sales of generators are up, but many can’t afford them.
The cuts have drawn ire on social media, where some have complained about being stuck in elevators, or unable to use them, and others have bemoaned the lack of air conditioning in hotter areas in southern Egypt.
At the launch of a state-run cloud computing data center this week, El-Sisi encouraged citizens to focus on developing sectors like information technology, saying “this needs brains, not a factory or anything else.”
But as one social media post quipped in response: “This needs electricity and unlimited Internet.”
Rafah incursion would put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, UN aid agency says
- Leaders internationally have urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be cautious
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said any US response to incursion would be up to President Biden
GAZA: The United Nations humanitarian aid agency says hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel carries out a military assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The city has become critical for humanitarian aid and is highly concentrated with displaced Palestinians.
Leaders internationally have urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be cautious about any incursion into Rafah, where seven people — mostly children — were killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike.
On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said any US response to such an incursion would be up to President Joe Biden, but that currently, “conditions are not favorable to any kind of operation.”
Turkiye’s trade minister said Friday that its new trade ban on Israel was in response to “the deterioration and aggravation of the situation in Rafah.”
The Israel-Hamas war has driven around 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, caused vast destruction in several towns and cities, and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine.
The death toll in Gaza has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and the territory’s entire population has been driven into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, abducting about 250 people and killing around 1,200, mostly civilians. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Dozens of people demonstrated Thursday night outside Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv, demanding a deal to release the hostages. Meanwhile, Hamas said it would send a delegation to Cairo as soon as possible to keep working on ceasefire talks. A leaked truce proposal hints at compromises by both sides after months of talks languishing in a stalemate.
Across the US, tent encampments and demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war have spread across university campuses.
More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested over the past two weeks as students rally against the war’s death toll and call for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel’s military efforts in Gaza.
Iraqi militant group claims missile attack on Tel Aviv targets, source says
- The attack was carried out with multiple Arqub-type cruise missiles
BAGHDAD: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a group of Iran-backed armed groups, launched multiple attacks on Israel using cruise missiles on Thursday, a source in the group said.
The source told Reuters the attack was carried out with multiple Arqub-type cruise missiles and targeted the Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of rockets and drone attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria and on targets in Israel in the more than six months since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7.
Israel has not publicly commented on the attacks claimed by Iraqi armed groups.
15 pro-government Syrian fighters killed in Daesh attacks: monitor
- It is the latest attack of its kind by remnants of the jihadists
BEIRUT: Daesh group militants killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters on Friday after they attacked three military positions in the Syrian desert, a war monitor said.
It is the latest attack of its kind by remnants of the jihadists.
They “attacked three military sites belonging to regime forces and fighters loyal to them... in the eastern Homs countryside, triggering armed clashes... and killing 15” pro-government fighters, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Daesh overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants continue to carry out deadly attacks, particularly against pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters in the vast desert.
Daesh remnants are also active in neighboring Iraq.
Last month, Daesh fighters killed 28 Syrian soldiers and affiliated pro-government forces in two attacks on government-held areas of Syria, the Observatory said.
Many were members of the Quds Brigade, a group comprising Palestinian fighters that has received support from Damascus ally Moscow in recent years, according to the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
In one of those attacks, the jihadists fired on a military bus in eastern Homs province, the Observatory said at the time.
Separately, six Syrian soldiers died in an Daesh attack against a base in eastern Syria, it added.
Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.
It then pulled in foreign powers, militias and jihadists.
In late March, Daesh militants “executed” eight Syrian soldiers after an ambush, the monitor said at that time.
The jihadists also target people hunting desert truffles, a delicacy which can fetch high prices in the war-battered economy.
The Observatory in March said Daesh had killed at least 11 truffle hunters by detonating a bomb as their car passed in the desert of Raqqa province in northern Syria.
In separate unrest in the country, Syria’s defense ministry earlier on Friday said eight soldiers had been injured in Israeli air strikes near Damascus.
The Observatory said Israel had struck a government building in the Damascus countryside that has been used by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group since 2014.
The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters.
Prominent Gaza doctor killed by torture in Israeli detention
- Al-Bursh died in Ofer Prison, an Israeli-run incarceration facility in the West Bank, says the Palestinian Prisoners Society
GAZA: Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon and former head of orthopedics at Gaza’s Al-Shifa medical complex, was killed on April 19 under torture in Israeli detention.
According to a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Al-Bursh, 50, died in Ofer Prison, an Israeli-run incarceration facility in the West Bank.
His body remains held by the Israeli authorities, according to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society described the doctor’s death in Israeli custody as “assassination.”
Al-Bursh, who was a prominent surgeon in Gaza’s largest hospital Al-Shifa, was reportedly working at Al-Awada Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip when he was arrested by Israeli forces.
The Israeli prison service declared Al-Bursh dead on April 19, claiming the doctor was detained for “national security reasons.”
However, the prison’s statement did not provide details on the cause of death. A prison service spokesperson said the incident was being investigated.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Thursday she was “extremely alarmed” at the death of the Palestinian surgeon.
“I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with concrete measures to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today,” she wrote on X.
I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at #alshifa_hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces in the Ofer military prison. While I acquire more information, I URGE the diplomatic community to intervene with CONCRETE MEASURES to…
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 2, 2024
Since Oct. 7, when Israel launched its retaliatory bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has carried out over 435 attacks on healthcare facilities in the besieged Palestinian enclave, killing at least 484 medical staff, according to UN figures.
However, the health authority in Gaza said in a statement that Al-Bursh’s death has raised the number of healthcare workers killed in the ongoing onslaught on the strip to 496.
Palestinian prisoner organizations report that the Israeli army has detained more than 8,000 Palestinians from the West Bank alone since Oct. 7. Of those, 280 are women and at least 540 are children.
