President Biden on Monday said he has spoken to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and congratulated him on winning a third term as Turkey’s head of state.
Mr Biden also told reporters he and Mr Erdogan planned to speak again at some point next week to discuss the Turkish leader’s opposition to Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Both Sweden and Finland — longtime neutral nations — asked to join the Nato defensive alliance in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last year. Because all Nato members must acquiesce to any country’s application to join Nato, any one nation has veto power over the aspirations of new members.
Mr Erdogan previously used this prerogative to block both nations’ bids to join the alliance, but he relented to allow Finland’s application to proceed to completion last month.
Yet he has continued to block Sweden’s request to be added to the now-31 member alliance, with some observers attributing his actions to pique over Stockholm’s refusal to crack down on demonstrations against his rule by the large Kurdish diaspora living there. Others have suggested that his intransigence stems from a desire to use Sweden’s Nato bid as a leverage point to force the US to sell his government F-16 multirole fighter aircraft and associated weapons following Turkey’s ouster from the F-35 programme over his decision to purchase a Russian-made surface-to-air missile system.
Since taking office, the US president has had a testy relationship with Mr Erdogan, who during his years in power has nearly eliminated any independent media and has cracked down on his political opposition while moving to increase Turkey’s ties with authoritarian and far-right nationalist governments, including Russia’s.
Mr Biden’s belated congratulations of Mr Erdogan comes after his predecessor, Donald Trump, offered public praise of the Turkish strongman on his Truth Social website.
During Mr Trump’s presidency, he routinely moved to smooth over relations with autocratic rulers such as Mr Erdogan, Hungarian President Viktor Orban, China’s Xi Jinping, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Mr Trump’s embrace of the Turkish leader stands in stark contrast with other Nato figures, including former Italian premier Mario Draghi, who has previously referred to Mr Erdogan as a “dictator”.
