ANKARA (Dispatches) – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that the United States risked ‘losing a precious friend’ if it tries to corner his country, speaking two weeks before his first meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden.
Already tense, relations between the two NATO states have further deteriorated since Biden replaced Donald Trump in January, with the new president highlighting Turkey’s human rights record.
When asked about Ankara-Washington relations, Erdogan said in an interview with Turkish state broadcaster TRT on Tuesday that “those who corner the Republic of Turkey will lose a precious friend”.
Erdogan’s combative stance comes ahead of the first meeting between the two presidents on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Brussels on June 14.
“At the meeting, we will ask why the Turkey-U.S. relations are going through such a tense period,” Erdogan said in the interview.
Biden was in no rush to speak with the Turkish leader after taking office, waiting three months before calling Erdogan in April.
That call was also on the eve of Biden’s historic decision to recognize the Armenian ‘genocide’ by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, a move that outraged Turkey which rejects that term.
“What is the reason for our tensions (with the U.S.)? The so-called Armenian genocide,” Erdogan said on Tuesday.
“Don’t you have any other problems to deal with rather than advocating for Armenia?”
He also listed several issues that have strained relations since 2016, including U.S. support for Kurdish militants in Syria that Turkey deems terrorists.
The two countries have also been at loggerheads over U.S.-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of having masterminded the July 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan.
Turkey has since been calling on the U.S. to extradite the opposition figure. Washington has until this day refused to do so.
Another thorny issue in bilateral relations is Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile system, which the U.S. alleges is not compatible with the military hardware owned by the other countries of the Western military alliance.
Washington also alleges that the S-400 defense system poses a threat to the American Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jets, which were to be jointly produced in Turkey.
That production was canceled by the White House over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400.