Erdogan makes important remarks after critical meeting with Biden

The meeting between Erdogan and Biden was postponed for an hour. The White House announced that the interview would begin an hour late. The interview started at 19: 00 Turkish time. Biden held a face-to-face meeting with Erdogan for the first time during his time as president of the United States. The interview ended at 19: 50.

President Erdogan and US President Joe Biden have ended their meeting. After the meeting, Erdogan made remarkable statements.

“WE HAD A VERY GOOD MEETING”

The meeting between Turkish and USA delegations held at NATO headquarters as part of the NATO summit and chaired by Erdogan and Biden lasted 40 minutes.

Erdogan was accompanied by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar, AKP spokesman Omar Celik, head of Presidential Communications Fahrettin Altun, Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin and Turkish ambassador to Washington Murat Mercan.

“We had a very good meeting with Erdogan,” Biden said in his first assessment of the meeting.

STATEMENT FROM ERDOGAN

President Erdogan made statements after the summit. Erdogan began his statement by talking about the Coronavirus outbreak. “The period is the period of putting our hands under the stone” Erdogan said.

“My friend Biden for many years” he said adding “I regret to point out one thing. Unfortunately, the hypocritical attitude to terrorism continues. It was clear that such a hypocritical attitude could not end the terror. It has emerged that one terrorist organization cannot be destroyed with another”.

Answering questions from members of the press, Erdogan said: “it is not possible that the issue of S-400 will not be raised, I expressed our previous opinion to Mr. President. There is no problem that cannot be solved with the United States.”

Erdogan who spoke about French president Macron as well shared following: “Macron said, ‘I am not an enemy of Islam.” Erdogan also noted that “the 1915 issue had not been raised” during his meeting with Biden.

Erdogan’s statements were as follows:

“As of first priority, we need to put Turkey-America relations on the table as follows. A lot of gossips, of course, inside, outside etc… We need to put this behind us and talk about what we can do, what we’re going to do.

Our area of topics is very wide. Because, April 24 was unfortunately a very, very negative development for us. Of course, we would not expect such an approach, but this approach has seriously upset us and of course we cannot find it right to pass without bringing it up. Because Turkey is not any country.

I made it clear both in my speech at the summit and in our bilateral talks that support for the YPG/PKK should be terminated. We also tried to prevent Syria from becoming a terrorist training camp. Until today, we have captured about 9 thousand foreign terrorist fighters and sent them back to their countries. We have banned more than 100 thousand terror suspects from entering our country. It is a great weakness that terrorists we deliver to source countries can move freely or even commit terrorist acts in some countries. Turkey has been left alone not only in its fight against the PKK, FETO and Daesh, but also in its efforts to prevent foreign terrorist fighters.

I have just met with US President Joe Biden on the occasion of the summit. We have had extensive exchanges with Mr. Biden with whom we have a long-standing friendship. We have dealt with issues where we disagree, as well as areas of cooperation where we have common interests. We discussed the work that we will do in geographies where we need effective cooperation.”