ISTANBUL, July 9. /TASS/. Ukraine and Sweden’s NATO membership, bilateral relations and purchases of US F-16 fighter jets were among the topics of telephone talks between Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Joe Biden of the United States, the office of the Turkish leader said on Sunday.

"The presidents discussed issues of Ukraine and Sweden’s membership in NATO, purchase of F-16 fighter jets, and Turkey’s full-fledged integration into the European Union. The leaders also agreed to meet on the sidelines of the NATO summit to discuss in detail bilateral and regional relations," it said.

As concerns Sweden’s NATO membership bid, Erdogan noted that Stockholm has taken certain steps in the right direction when it amended its anti-terrorism laws but the fact that supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is outlawed in Turkey, continue to hold their actions freely reduce these efforts to zero. "Our president, among other things, said that it is inappropriate to link the demand for F-16 supplies to Turkey to Sweden’s membership [in NATO]," it said.

According to the TRT television channel, Erdogan and Biden also discussed the situation around the grain deal.

Ahead of the NATO summit in Madrid, Erdogan held talks with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, then Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on June 28, 2022. The talks yielded a memorandum, which was a kind of roadmap for Stockholm and Helsinki’s membership in the alliance. On March 31, Turkey’s parliament approved a protocol on Finland’s admission to NATO but refused to approve Sweden’s membership bid, demanding that Stockholm implement all the provisions of the Madrid memorandum on combating terrorism.

Ankara has also criticized Stockholm for pandering to supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is banned in Turkey, and to Quran-burning actions.