Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and United States Vice President Joe Biden are in the midst of a heated back-and-forth.
Erdogan challenged on Saturday Biden’s comments that the Turkish government admitted erring by allowing foreign jihadists to cross its border with Syria, saying Biden “will be history for me if he has indeed used such expressions.”
Biden said the now-controversial comments after a speech he delivered to Harvard’s Kennedy School Thursday.
The vice president also pointed the finger Thursday at regional allies for escalating the rise of extremism in Syria.
“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria … What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad,” Biden said, according to the State House News Service.
Turkey’s parliament moved Thursday to allow it greater leeway in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Islamic State forces continue to besiege the Syrian town of Kobani, which sits next to the Turkish border.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday that Turkey “wouldn’t want Kobani to fall,” according to the Daily Beast.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters have been pouring into Kobani in an effort to defend the beleaguered town from the Islamic State advance.
U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have been targeting Islamic State positions in the area, but the siege has yet to be broken.
The Islamic State released another beheading video Friday.
UPDATE: The White House released a statement Saturday saying Biden apologized to Erdogan.
“The vice president made clear that the United States greatly values the commitments and sacrifices made by our Allies and partners from around the world to combat the scourge of ISIL, including Turkey,” the statement read, according to the Huffington Post. “The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of Turkey and the United States working closely together to confront ISIL.”
