The US ambassador to Turkey said he expects President Erdogan to complete within days the ratification of Sweden’s bid to join NATO and that steps will be taken quickly to approve the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara by the US Congress.

In an interview today, Ambassador Jeff Flake said that once the official ratification document reaches Washington, the State Department will immediately send an announcement to Congress about the sale of F-16s worth more than $20 billion.

The Turkish parliament ratified Sweden’s accession to NATO yesterday, Tuesday, removing a major obstacle to the expansion of the Western military alliance after a 20-month delay.

Erdogan must now sign the relevant legislation, which will then be published in the Turkish Government Gazette.

The official document of ratification of Sweden’s accession must also be sent to Washington.

Asked if he expected that to happen “within days,” Flake, a former Republican senator, told Reuters: “Yes, I do.”

“I don’t see why Turkey should wait, when the parliament here has acted,” he said. “So I expect, once that goes to Washington, then the announcement (of the F-16 sale) will be made. And the official announcement will be made.”

Ankara’s delays in approving Sweden’s membership have frustrated its allies, but have also allowed it to extract some concessions. Flake, who was the US ambassador to Turkey throughout the process, said, however, that during this time Sweden had responded to Turkey’s “very legitimate security needs”.

The ambassador said he reached out to the heads of the US House and Senate foreign relations committees, including those who expressed concerns about the F-16 sale to Turkey because of that country’s human rights record and delays in accession of Sweden.

“There are members of Congress who had a strong belief that before we could go ahead with the sale of the F-16s, Sweden had to become a member of NATO,” he said.

“But everyone sees the value of Turkey’s participation in NATO and everyone sees the value of the interoperability that will come with this modernization of the F-16s.”