Turkey will be visited on Saturday by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with the agenda of the F-16s and the integration of Sweden into NATO.

As mentioned by Manolis Kostidisthe Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan officially announced that Blinken “will come to Turkey as my guest”.

As Fidan said, they will discuss the developments in Gaza, however, the main topic of discussion will be Turkey’s stance on Sweden’s accession to NATO.

On the other hand, the Turkish side will push for the acquisition of F-16s and the modernization of existing F-16s, with Ankara waiting for some move from the White House to lobby Congress.

Fidan said that there is no plan for Erdogan to visit the White House.

Erdogan decided to build a new aircraft carrier and a total of eight ISTIF class frigates

With the decision of the Turkish president, Turkey will acquire amphibious ships and 10 missile launchers.

Design for the Turkish Air Force for the Turkish KAAN fighter.

The decisions were taken at the meeting of the defense industry executive committee chaired by Erdogan and the program is starting to “run”.

Worry about equipment

Turkish analysts claim that the Turkish air force has fallen behind the Greek air force.

“BLOCK-70 F-16s will be able to shoot ours down before we even spot them on radar!”

“We want to get EUROFIGHTER to face the Greek RAFALE”

“If the Greeks also get F-35s, there will be a big disturbance in the Turkish air force”

Wing Commander Erdoğan Karakos said: “We want to acquire Eurofighters to counter the Greek Rafale fighters. About the Eurofighter. They are equal to the Rafale which are both detected by the radars. But think of the annoyance of the Turkish Air Force in the event that Greece acquires the F-35s as well. There is also the other issue that a new F-16 Block-70 can and does launch the air-to-air missile at a range of 100 miles, while the old F-16 fighters can do about the same at 100 miles. That is, when the two fighters come face to face, the old one will be shot down before the F-16 Block-70 can even be detected. It’s so simple!”.

Inflation record in Turkey – Turkish media: “Record of the last 22 years”

“Official inflation at 64.7%, unofficial at 127% – We’re back in 2001”

Fatih Portakal, presenter of HALK TV, said: “The ENAG initiative announced that in 2023 inflation reached 127.2%. It was a clear announcement. This initiative consists of academics, professors and has no political interference. The Statistics Agency, which is the government, which I don’t trust, claimed that annual inflation for 2023 was 64.7%. This is how our government announces it, but when you go to the market you see a completely different picture. For us, inflation is at 150 or 160%, but the head is of the opinion that it is at lower levels.”

He continued: “We have returned to the past. We are back to the inflation we had 22 years ago. Of course, we didn’t get to the point of throwing the cash registers, as at that time Ahmet Cakmak had thrown his cash register outside the then prime minister’s office to protest.”