Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking a fresh start with U.S. President Joe Biden who has already shown his distaste for Erdogan, calling him an autocrat and giving him the cold shoulder.
Biden’s first phone call to Erdogan came three months after his inauguration, and even then, it was only to inform the Turkish leader of his historic decision to recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide.
Biden and Erdogan have a full plate of bilateral irritants that have accumulated over the past several years to discuss on the margins of the June 14 NATO summit in Brussels.
The encounter comes at a sensitive time for Erdogan, whose country is teetering on the edge of a potentially catastrophic economic and political crisis.
Experts believe that Biden should use this meeting to press Erdogan on some specific human rights concerns that speak to Turkey’s democratic malaise and increasing disdain for civilized international behavior.
Since the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan’s government and hand-picked judiciary have led a massive witch hunt against his political opponents and critics, detaining more than 100,000 people under overly broad terrorism charges.
Those arrested included not only U.S. citizens, most prominently, North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, but also three local employees of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul. The U.S. State Department considers these arrests to be politically motivated and without legal basis.
This March, a public prosecutor in Ankara demanded the closure of Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish opposition, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Biden, who has pledged to restore human rights and democracy as pillars of U.S. foreign policy, seeks to support democracy in Turkey and sees an authoritarian Turkey is a threat not just to core U.S. values but also to U.S. security.
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