Erdogan says US has ‘historic responsibility’ to ensure Gaza cease-fire in call with Biden

ANKARA — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, Sweden’s pending NATO membership and the Turkish bid to purchase new F-16 jets from the United States in a rare phone call between the two on Thursday, an official Turkish statement said. 

Erdogan told Biden that the United States bears “a historical responsibility to ensure a permanent cease-fire in the region as soon as possible,” according to a Turkish readout. 

Erdogan said that a cease-fire could be achieved swiftly once the United States revokes “its unconditional support” of Israel, the readout noted. “The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza must be stopped as soon as possible,” Erdogan added. 

The American side hasn’t released a readout as of this writing. 

The Turkish readout largely focused on the raging Israel-Hamas war, but the phone call comes at a critical time when Washington and Ankara are at an impasse. Washington has been pressing Turkey to ratify the Swedish bid to join NATO, while Ankara is seeking guarantees for its own request to purchase new F-16 fighter jets from the United States. 

Before Thursday’s call, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a one-on-one meeting with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, in Washington on Saturday. The two top diplomats discussed the war as well as Sweden’s membership in the transatlantic alliance, according to a US readout of the meeting. Blinken stressed “the importance of ratifying Sweden’s NATO accession without delay.”

NATO expansion has turned into a foreign policy priority for the Biden administration in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Biden-Erdogan phone call marks the first contact between the two leaders since a NATO summit in July during which Erdogan had pledged to conclude a Turkish ratification process for Sweden’s NATO membership, only to postpone it later to parliament’s return from its summer recess on Oct. 1.

The Turkish leader initiated the ratification process by submitting Sweden’s accession protocol to the parliament on Oct. 23, but the Turkish parliament, where Erdogan’s ruling coalition commands a majority, has yet to set a date for the vote on the issue. The accession protocol is still being debated by a sub-parliamentary committee. 

Erdogan last week openly linked the expansion of the security alliance to Ankara’s request to buy 40 new F-16 fighter jets and roughly 50 modernization kits from the United States, abandoning his initial position that the two issues should be kept separate. “I submitted [Sweden’s accession protocol] to the parliament, and you thanked me. I fulfilled my duty, but I also expect something from you: You pass [F-16 deal] in your Congress so that we can take these steps simultaneously,” he said last Wednesday.

Turkey had requested to buy $20 billion of F-16 fighter jets and modernization kits in October 2021. The Biden administration openly endorsed the Turkish bid, but the US State Department has yet to submit an official notification for the sale to the US Congress amid congressional objections.

This is a breaking article and has been updated since its initial publication.