One of his top representatives, Eddie Zemenidis, spoke to SKAI and stressed that at the moment the Congress has not given approval or given an indication and that without this Biden is “tied hands”.
Reflections on the attitude of the President Biden expresses the Greek-American lobby in Washington. One of its leading representatives, the Eddie Zemenidis spoke to and Apostolos Maggeriadis.
Mr. Zemenidis explained that what Biden said strengthens him politically Erdoganbut not Turkey, and clarified that Congress has not changed its stance on the sale and modernization of F-16 in Turkey.
Eddy, in relation to yesterday’s meeting between President Biden and President Erdogan, do you think that Turkey has reasons to believe that it has won something?
No Turkey as a state no. Edogan personally can. The positions and those expressed by President Biden have been expressed by the State Department before, we see that especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine they are trying to find an opening to improve Turkey-US relations. What the President said and he said today that “yes, we are interested in selling the F-16s” may be said to please Erdogan, but it does not change the substance, that without Congress I can not do by himself.
Now his question is do you consider Congress any specific barrier to sale for the 16 modernization?
First of all, he does not need to set other obstacles. At present, Congress has neither given its approval nor given any indication. There may have been someone like Lenji Gram who says I support but it’s not the case, says Gram. And remember that all Grams was himself and someone who was in favor of Turkey to get 35.2 to get sanctions. So I do not care much about what Mr. Gram says. But for now, Congress does not need to do anything, and we must also pay attention to the fact that President Biden and his government have not given notice to Congress, so the sale process has a long way to go and I believe Congress will listen to what President Biden has to say today and will set more publicly what the limits are for this process to proceed.
Do you think that what Erdogan did in the end was a diplomatic bargain from which he gained something by effectively withdrawing the veto on the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO?
I think Erdogan tried hard but this is a game that Erdogan is playing. He asks for everything and in the end here I do not think he won, he won some rhetoric because even this memorandum, the memorandum is a memorandum is not a treaty. It did not pass through the parliaments of Finland and Sweden. Here Erdogan escaped squandering. After all, what Biden says “yes, we support the F-16s”, which I should not disagree with, because they do not give a clear message and the bad thing is, as I said, that Turkey as a state did not win it. But Erdogan will go and sell politically at a time when he is not strong, he is so weak politically, that “I have the support of NATO Europe and Biden.” And this is a big mistake because Erdogan can lose, we can influence Turkey and politics in the wider Turkey and these messages from America will not only strengthen Erdogan but encourage the nationalists in Turkey and now the opposition. will become more nationalistic. That is why what Biden did was very wrong.
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