ROME (AP) – US President Joe Biden told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that his two countries must better handle their disagreements after Turkey threatened to ignore the US ambassador and bought a Russian anti-missile system.
“We thought we would have a good conversation,” Biden said as the two leaders confronted reporters before their closed-door talks. Biden declined to answer questions about whether he thought Ankara was allying with Moscow, or about the human rights situation in Turkey.
At the meeting, he ratified the importance of Turkey being part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and being a defense partner with the United States but, according to a statement from the White House, he mentioned concerns about the purchase of the Russian S-400 system.
The Turkish president has even been willing to buy another Russian system, despite the controversy caused by the purchase of the first system in 2017.
Turkey’s role as a NATO ally has come under close scrutiny in recent weeks.
At a rally on October 23, Erdogan declared that 10 foreign ambassadors who called for the release of an imprisoned philanthropist should be declared persona non grata. The envoys – including representatives from the United States, France and Germany – issued a statement seeking to resolve the case of Osman Kavala, a businessman and philanthropist imprisoned since 2017 despite not being convicted of a crime.
Erdogan did not follow through on the threat, but reflected the growing tensions with Washington.
Erdogan’s office said in a statement that the meeting was held in a “positive atmosphere” in which the leaders expressed the “joint will to further strengthen and improve Turkey-US relations and agreed to establish a common mechanism accordingly. ”.
The statement also said there was “satisfaction with the mutual measures taken on climate change.”
Turkey was expelled from a US program to buy F-35 fighter jets and defense officials were sanctioned after purchasing the Russian S-400 system. The United States opposes the use of Russian systems within the NATO alliance, saying they pose a threat to American F-35s.
Ankara maintains that the S-400s could be used independently without being integrated into NATO systems and therefore pose no risk.
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