Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Thursday that US President Joe Biden offered his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan more than $11 billion in IMF assistance to ratify Sweden’s bid to join the NATO bloc.
In an article posted to his Substack account, Hersh wrote that he had been informed by an anonymous source that “Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit” would be established for Türkiye by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This was to be in return, Hersh suggested, for Erdogan removing Ankara’s objection to Stockholm joining the US-led military bloc ahead of the NATO summit that took place this week in Lithuania.
Erdogan, who was re-elected as Turkish leader in late May, is currently facing the mammoth task of replacing or repairing hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed in February’s earthquakes in which at least 50,000 lost their lives.
Türkiye had previously opposed Sweden’s accession to the bloc, largely due to Ankara’s stance that Stockholm has harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which was involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish state in the 1980s. The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, Sweden, Europe and the United States.