Meeting with Biden looms as critical test for Erdogan
Turkey’s relationship with the United States poses the toughest test for Erdogan in the coming period, bound to sway both his foreign policy and political alliances at home.
Bracing for a make-or-break meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains squeezed between an imposing need for a thaw in his fraught ties with Washington and the task of selling it to his fold at home, where anti-American sentiment is running high, not least because he has often fueled it himself.
The two leaders are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels on June 14 in what would be their first face-to-face encounter since Biden became president, stripping Erdogan of a cozy rapport with the White House under Donald Trump.
Hectic preparations are under way in Ankara for the meeting, sources close to the government say, as a slew of thorny dossiers await the two NATO allies. Chief among them is the lingering row over Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems and its ensuing ouster from the F-35 joint strike fighter program by Washington. Bilateral tensions have simmered also over US support for Kurdish forces in Syria, the US trial of a Turkish public bank for helping Iran evade sanctions, Washington’s refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based preacher accused of orchestrating the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and Ankara’s territorial rows with Greece in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Other issues of mutual concern include relations with Russia and tensions in the Black Sea region, the future of Syria and the situation in Iraq, particularly in the Kurdish-run north, where the Turkish army has been pursuing armed Kurdish militants from Turkey taking refuge in the region.
In a TV interview June 1, Erdogan conceded that his dialogue with Biden “has not been easy” thus far, unlike his “very peaceful and easy-going” phone diplomacy with Trump. Referring also to the terms of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he said he “had never experienced such tension” with the White House, putting the blame on Biden for recognizing the Ottoman-era killings of Armenians as genocide.
