ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet US counterpart Joe Biden at the White House on May 9, a Turkish official said on Friday.

It would be the first White House meeting between the two leaders, who last met on the margins of the Nato summit in Lithuania in July.

The Nato allies are seeking to rebuild ties strained over Turkiye’s delayed approval of Sweden’s acces­sion to the alliance.

“I think this is quite a significant trip. Erdogan has now been in charge of running Turkiye for 21 years and Biden is the first president until this moment to not have invited him to the White House,” Soner Cagaptay, a director at The Washington Institute, said.

“It’s a pretty big deal that Erdogan has finally secured an invitation just before the end of Biden’s term,” he said.

Turkiye’s resistance to Sweden’s Nato bid after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was one of the sticking issues in ties. The move reflected Erdogan’s more nuanced stance toward Moscow. Ankara has profited from maintaining trade with Moscow while at the same time supplying Kyiv with drones and other essential arms.

Erdogan has also been one of the few leaders to hold regular meetings and phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was initially expected to visit Turkiye last month.

Ankara refused to join the West in imposing sanctions on Moscow as concerns were raised over Turkiye becoming a transit route for goods supporting Russia’s wartime defence industry.

“We have no intention to harm legitimate trade between Turkiye and Russia, but we are very serious when it comes to illegal trade,” a Western diplomat said.

The Biden administration approved $23 billion in F-16 warplanes for Turkiye swiftly after it ratified Sweden’s stalled Nato membership bid. Turkiye will get 40 new F-16s and upgrades to 79 jets in its existing fleet.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2024