What to expect when Biden meets Erdogan

Expectations are soaring in Ankara over the forthcoming meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Brussels next Monday.

Erdogan said recently, “I believe that our meeting with Biden at the NATO summit will be the harbinger of a new era.” 

Without doubt, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s remarks at a White House briefing on Monday on Biden’s first presidential tour abroad carried positive vibes – that Biden is looking forward to reviewing the “full breadth” of Ankara-Washington ties and discuss Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Afghanistan and other regional issues as part of an “expansive agenda” next week, while acknowledging that the two leaders will also look at the “significant differences” between the two NATO allies. 

Most important, Sullivan transmitted a “presidential message” to Erdogan personally: “President Biden knows Erdogan very well. The two men have spent a good amount of time together and they’re both, I think, looking forward to the opportunity to really have a businesslike opportunity to review the full breadth of the relationship.” 

The conventional wisdom among analysts is that the US and Turkey are hopelessly entangled in a messy relationship. But then, the two countries also have a long history of sequestering their alliance from deep differences. At the present moment, what lends enchantment to the Turkish-American alliance is that Washington has consistently regarded Turkey as a “swing” state that can tilt the West’s relations with Russia.