Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu

As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be hosting his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Washington on Wednesday, the Biden administration will be moving ahead with its stated intention to supply Turkey with 40 new F-16s and modernization kits to upgrade 80 of its older ones.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday that a Swedish prosecutor not taking action over an incident where President Tayyip Erdogan's effigy was hung in Stockholm was "absurd."

Speaking at a news conference, Cavusoglu said the incident was a racist attack and constituted a hate crime. Sweden should not try to fool Turkey by calling it freedom of speech, he added.

Senior officials from Türkiye and Iran discussed bilateral ties as well as regional issues, including the ongoing Syrian civil war, in the Turkish capital on Jan. 17.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian visited Ankara on a one-day trip where he was received by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and held talks with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

Turkey and the United States will aim to smooth out a series of disagreements between the NATO allies when the Turkish foreign minister visits Washington this week. But expectations that outstanding issues can be resolved are low.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has reiterated Ankara's expectation over the smooth supply of 40 new F-16s and 79 modernization kits for the existing fleets from the United States, saying that the matter waits for the approval of Congress.

The three-day tour of West Africa completed by Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias on Friday was deemed to have been crowned a success as countries such as Ivory Coast, Gabon and Ghana share a common understanding with Greece of what the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates.

The Biden administration is planning to seek congressional approval for a $20 billion sale of new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, according to US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal, which also said that a separate sale of next-generation F-35 jets to Greece will also take place, in what would be among the largest foreign military sales in recent years.

Libya's Government of National Unity (GNU) told Turkey "not to take seriously" a court ruling that suspended an energy exploration deal that the Tripoli government signed with Ankara last year, the Turkish foreign minister said on Thursday.

Notably, the constantly turbulent Greek-Turkish maritime dispute has been going through another hot phase since 2020 that reached a culmination at the end of 2022, when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reminded us of the Turkish casus belli threat, should Greece exercise its inalienable right to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles south and west of Crete.

A decision communicated on Tuesday afternoon by Libya  is nothing less than a "slap" in the face for the government of Abdulhamit Dbeiba, but also of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.