The arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean continues to accelerate. Greece is to receive up to 40 stealth fighter jets from the USA F-35 receive. The State Department in Washington approved the sale last Friday; Congress now has to agree, but this is considered certain. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the decision in a letter; He wrote that they wanted to work closely with Greece “to advance our common interests and promote international peace and security.”
In addition to the sale of the jets, Athens is to receive military aid and material worth up to $200 million from Washington. It is a “very large, free equipment package,” said Mitsotakis in a speech in which he also praised the “strategic depth of Greek-American relations.”
Sweden’s accession to NATO plays a major role
Mitsotakis had the delivery of the state-of-the-art F-35-Jets already applied for in summer 2022. Tensions between Greece and Turkey had previously increased massively; In the dispute over natural gas reserves under the Mediterranean, warships from the two NATO member countries were at times on standby against each other, and Turkish fighter jets and drones repeatedly invaded Greek airspace.
In May 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly railed: “From now on, no one with the name Mitsotakis will exist for me anymore.” Shortly before, the Greek Prime Minister had reported on the airspace violations during a visit to the US Congress – and linked this to the request for Washington to deliver a delivery of airspace materials requested by Ankara F-16-Reject fighter jets to Turkey.
Recently, relations between Athens and Ankara have calmed down somewhat. From Erdoğan’s perspective, Mitsotakis at least exists again; the two shook hands at a meeting in Athens in December and signed a declaration of “friendly relations and good neighborliness.” Now it’s not just the Greeks from Washington who are getting what they’ve long hoped for F-35 received, the US State Department also received a delivery of 40 copies of the somewhat less modern one F-16 and 39 modernization kits were approved for Turkey. The decision came just one day after Erdoğan, after much stalling, agreed to Sweden joining NATO.