White House: Biden To Meet With Turkey’s Erdogan At NATO

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan talks following his cabinet meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, May 17, 2021. Erdogan slammed U.S President Joe Biden, accusing him of "writing history with his bloody hands" following reports of a multi-million dollar weapons sale to Israel by his administration. Erdogan also said Jerusalem should be administered by an international commission made up of Jewish, Christian and Muslim representatives. (Mustafa Kamaci/Turkish Presidency via AP)

President Joe Biden will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while on his trip to Europe later this month, the White House announced Thursday.

The meeting, which will take place June 14 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels, comes against the backdrop of some tension between the two leaders.

Erdogan had pushed for an earlier call with Biden after the U.S. president took office. And he was later frustrated when Biden declared the mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Turks in 1915 as a “genocide,” a decree Ankara long opposed.

The White House also revealed other details of Biden’s first overseas trip as president, which begins next week. The president will first meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on June 10 ahead of attending the G-7 summit in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden will then have an audience with Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle before heading to Belgium for the NATO and European summits. While there, he will meet with host leaders King Philippe and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

The trip will conclude in Geneva, where Biden on June 16 will meet with Swiss President Guy Parmelin and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis ahead of his highly anticipated summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

(AP)