Erdogan meets with Biden for tough NATO expansion talks

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday he would meet US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of NATO’s Madrid summit for talks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the bloc’s expansion into two Nordic states.

Analysts believe the meeting could play a crucial role in breaking Turkey’s resistance to bids by Sweden and Finland to join the western defense alliance in response to the war.

The relationship between the two leaders has been cool since Biden’s election over US human rights concerns under Erdogan.

Biden and Erdogan last met briefly in October on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Rome.

“We spoke to Mr Biden this morning and he has expressed his desire to meet tonight or tomorrow. We said it’s possible,” Erdogan said.

He spoke to reporters before flying to Madrid for talks that will begin with his meeting with the leaders of the two Nordic countries and NATO Secretary General.

Erdogan said he wanted to see the results of the preparatory talks in Brussels on Monday before deciding whether Sweden and Finland had done enough to overturn his objections to their membership in the military alliance.

Turkey is a NATO member and could veto the proposals of both countries at the summit.

“We are a 70-year NATO member. Turkey is not a country that just happened to join NATO,” Erdogan said.

“We will see what point they (Finland and Sweden) have reached,” he added. “We don’t want empty words. We want results.”

Ankara has accused Finland, and Sweden in particular, of providing a safe haven for Kurdish militants who have been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades.

The Turkish leader has also urged the two countries to lift the arms embargo imposed on Turkey in 2019 over Ankara’s military offensive in Syria.

The two countries went into the NATO meeting with the possibility that Turkey could only lift its objections after the summit concluded on Thursday.

“We have made progress. That is definitely the case,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde.

“We are prepared for something positive to happen today, but also for it to take longer,” she added. “We have to be patient and continue the talks after the summit.”

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said he was “neither optimistic nor pessimistic at this stage”.

“We will go into the discussion with Erdogan this afternoon with an open mind,” he told Finnish media.

Erdogan’s ability to maintain a close working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while supporting Ukraine’s war effort has made him a key player in the conflict.

But those connections have also complicated his ties with Biden and the NATO bloc.

Washington has sanctioned Ankara for adopting an advanced Russian missile defense system in 2019.

The purchase resulted in the United States removing Turkey from the joint F-35 fighter jet program and imposing trade restrictions on its military procurement agency.

But Washington has signaled it may be ready to settle the dispute.

Biden’s government has considered the possibility of supplying Ankara with older-generation F-16 jets that could fill out Turkey’s aging air force fleet.

“The most important issue is the F-16 problem. It’s still on the table,” Erdogan said of his upcoming talks with Biden.