Amid strained U.S.-Turkey relations, Biden and Erdogan to meet on sidelines of NATO summit
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the high road at a Sunday news conference as he left home for a meeting with President Biden at the NATO summit in Brussels, dismissing “rumors” about the state of the U.S.-Turkey relationship and suggesting that they “leave all these behind and speak about what we can do together.”
The same Erdogan last month accused Biden of having “bloody hands” for selling arms to Israel, in comments that the State Department called antisemitic.
The last time Biden met with the Turkish leader, during a vice-presidential visit to Ankara in 2016, it was to deny Erdogan’s charges that the United States had helped plot a coup attempt against him. In Istanbul earlier that year, Biden publicly criticized Erdogan’s arrests of journalists, political opponents and academics.
During his presidential campaign, Biden called Erdogan an “autocrat” and said the United States should support his political opponents. After Biden’s inauguration, the White House purposefully held off a congratulatory call from the Turkish leader for three months.
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