President Obama will meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan Thursday night, despite outrage over Erdogan’s bodyguards’ manhandling of reporters outside a Washington think tank where he was giving a speech earlier in the day.
Obama’s decision to have an informal one-on-one with Erdogan on the sidelines of a White House dinner with other world leaders came after initial reports that the president would snub the mercurial but key Middle East leader during his visit to Washington this week.
“We expect President Obama to be able to have a discussion with President Erdogan tonight on the margins of the dinner that is at the White House,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters Thursday afternoon. “We have indicated that given the many different complex issues [at stake], the two can find some time to have a meeting tonight.”
Originally, the White House had only scheduled a meeting between Erdogan and Vice President Joe Biden, which occurred Thursday morning, while the Turkish leader is in town for the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit.
The White House has tried to explain away the slight as a scheduling issue, but Washington’s diplomatic community has largely viewed it as a sign of Obama’s frustration with Erdogan’s actions in Turkey, and more generally, his foot-dragging in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.
In recent weeks, Erdogan directed a government seizure of Turkey’s largest newspaper, Zaman, amid accusations that it had become a mouthpiece for a one-time Erdogan ally now charged with attempting to overthrow the government, according to ForeignPolicy.com. The paper’s staff was gutted and replaced with friendlier editors to his administration, a development State Department spokesman John Kirby called “troubling.”
Friction with western reporters also erupted during Erdogan’s visit to Washington when the Turkish president’s security personnel verbally attacked a reporter for the Economist, sought to physically remove another from the event and reportedly manhandled others before Erdogan’s speech at the Brookings Institute Thursday morning.
Amberin Zaman, the journalist, said Erdogan’s bodyguards insulted her by calling her a “PKK whore,” referring to the Kurdish militant left-wing group, according to tweets about the incident. Others attending the Brookings speech tweeted reports that Erdogan’s bodyguards attacked a Turkish journalist and got into a fistfight with unidentified people protesting his visit to the U.S.
Video of the clashes appear to corroborate parts of the story, and the National Press Club issued a statement expressing alarm about the alleged abuse.
“Turkey’s leader and his security team are guest in the United States,” National Press Club President Thomas Burr said in a statement. “They have not right to lay their hands on reporters or protesters or anyone else for that matter, when the people they were apparently roughing up seemed to be merely doing their jobs or exercising the rights they have in this country.”
“We have increasingly seen disrespect for basic human rights and press freedom in Turkey,” he added. “Erdogan doesn’t get to export such abuse.”
Rhodes said he had not heard the details about the clashes between Erdogan’s bodyguards and reporters and protesters, but stressed U.S. support for freedom of the press and the administration’s concerns about Turkey’s recent actions against journalists.
“Obviously the U.S. strongly supports freedom of the press and the media … and we have in the past indicated our concerns about some of the steps that have been taken against journalists inside Turkey,” he said. “We have raised them directly with the Turkish government and will continue to do so.”
Foreign Policy this week reported that Erdogan held a dinner with some of Washington’s “top think tank luminaries” Tuesday night, and blasted the Obama administration’s policies in Syria.
During an off-the-record dinner at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel, a “defiant” Erdogan bashed White House support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, FP reported.
