Following disappointing talks with US President Joe Biden, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that he will instead try to build ties with Russia, revealing that discussions in New York went badly.
The two leaders met at the UN General Assembly, which is currently ongoing at the organization’s headquarters in America’s largest city.
Speaking in Istanbul, after returning home, Erdogan told journalists that he and Biden had not seen eye-to-eye.
“In the discussions with Mr. Biden that I’d been anticipating, there wasn’t the desired outcome,” he said. “As two NATO countries, we need to be at a different point.”
The Turkish leader also slammed Washington for what it sees as a failure to defeat extremism, noting that the US has armed Kurdish militants in Syria.
“America is not fighting terrorist organizations enough, it is giving them a lot of weapons and equipment,” he lamented.
Instead, the Turkish president revealed that his country would “strive to further bilateral relations with Russia.”
Erdogan’s public announcement that Ankara would look to deepen ties with Moscow comes just five days before he is due to travel to Russia, where he will meet President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on the Black Sea.
Moscow and Ankara have a complicated relationship, with both regular disagreements and cooperation. For example, Russia has sold a missile defense system to Turkey, while subsequently being on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, where Moscow has backed President Bashar Assad.
Another disagreement comes in the form of Crimea, which Ankara refuses to recognize as part of Russia. Earlier this week, Erdogan told gathered world leaders at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly that Turkey supports “Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, including the territory of Crimea, whose annexation we do not recognize.”
Ankara’s attempts to play both sides in the Kiev-Moscow dispute may place limits on the progress Erdogan can make with Putin.
Credit: RT News