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Biden's apology won't spur Turkey to action in Syria

While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems satisfied with US Vice President Joe Biden's apology, Turkey remains a reluctant ally in the fight against the Islamic State.
Vice President of the U.S. Joe Biden addresses a high-level summit on strengthening international peace operations during the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York September 26, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Gombert/Pool (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR47V3N

Question:  Can you — I realize some of this has been talked about at the White House briefing already, but can you explain from the State Department point of view why the administration felt it was necessary for the vice president to apologize to Turkey and semi-apologize to the UAE [United Arab Emirates], and whether he has plans to apologize to anybody else? There’s a long list of countries out there that I think may feel may have — may have felt slighted.

Jen Psaki:  Well, I think my White House colleagues have already addressed this, as you noted in your question. And as you also I’m sure have seen, there have been readouts of those calls describing the specifics of the conversations. I think they described it more as clarifying recent remarks. Obviously, we have important relationships with a number of these countries and want to work on how we can work together moving forward on the international coalition, and I think that’s probably why that decision was made.

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