Trump Hosts Erdogan for First Meeting Since Clash Over Syria
Trump Brings Erdogan to White House as Impeachment Hearings Open
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump will welcome Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House on Wednesday -- the leaders’ first meeting since a diplomatic clash over Turkey’s military offensive in northern Syria -- as Congress opens the first public impeachment hearings into the U.S. president.
Trump will be trying to move past the episode in Syria that he helped trigger by pulling U.S. troops out of the region, where they were maintaining peace between Turkey and the American-allied Kurdish forces that helped defeat Islamic State. At the same time, Trump is expected to increase pressure on Erdogan over his decision to purchase a Russian anti-aircraft missile system despite American admonitions.
The meeting comes as Trump faces the first of several public hearings in the U.S. House over whether he has abused his power by conducting foreign policy for his personal benefit, meriting impeachment. Turkey has featured in reports related to Trump’s controversial conduct. Before directing an effort to force Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals, Rudy Giuliani -- the president’s personal lawyer -- lobbied the White House to deport a Turkish dissident Erdogan blames for a failed 2016 coup.
The Turkish leader is a pariah to most American politicians besides Trump after conducting an offensive against U.S.-allied Kurds in Syria last month. He’s further antagonized lawmakers with his increasingly authoritarian domestic politics and by proceeding with the purchase of a Russian anti-aircraft missile system despite American admonitions.
This will be Erdogan’s second visit to Washington since Trump’s inauguration. During his first, in May 2017, his personal security forces attacked peaceful protesters and scuffled with Washington police outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence, an incident that foreshadowed a deterioration in relations with the U.S.
Wednesday’s meeting, which will include a joint news conference, will require a balancing act by Trump. He is under pressure from Congress to persuade Erdogan to abandon the Russian missile system -- the S-400 -- or else to impose stiff economic sanctions. But Trump is also eager to preserve his personal relationship with the Turkish leader, as well as an important strategic relationship with the most problematic member of the NATO alliance.
While Trump meets with Erdogan, the House Intelligence Committee will hold a public hearing featuring two key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry: William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the State Department. The two men are expected to deliver damaging testimony about the Giuliani-led effort to compel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations into supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and a company, Burisma Holdings, linked to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Bipartisan Condemnation
Members of Congress in both parties have preemptively condemned Erdogan’s White House visit in light of the Syria offensive, which followed a telephone call in which Trump agreed to withdraw U.S. forces from a region near Turkey’s border. Democrats and Republicans have said Trump’s decision amounted to a green-light for Erdogan’s offensive and signaled U.S. abandonment of Kurdish forces that helped defeat Islamic State.
A group of senators will meet with Erdogan and Trump at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The group includes James Risch, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, one of the people said.
House Foreign Relations Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, urged Trump in a letter released Monday to disinvite Erdogan. Turkey‘s Syria offensive “has had disastrous consequences for U.S. national security, has led to deep divisions in the NATO alliance, and caused a humanitarian crisis on the ground,” Engel wrote in the letter, which was co-signed by some of his committee’s Republicans.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House, separately requested that the State Department block some members of Erdogan’s entourage from entering the U.S. in response to the 2017 attack on protesters.
“The Erdogan regime’s use of violence against innocent civilians anywhere is inhumane, uncivilized and unacceptable,” Cheney wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. The State Department did not return a request for comment, and Trump himself has been conspicuously silent about the 2017 incident.
But speaking Tuesday in New York, Trump signaled he was less concerned about Erdogan’s record, or that of any other leader ready to do business with the U.S.
“When I meet with the leaders of countries as they come in -- kings, queens, prime ministers, presidents, dictators -- I meet them all, anybody that wants to come in,” Trump said. “Dictators, that’s ok. Come on in. Whatever is good for the United States.”
Erdogan considered canceling his visit last week after the House voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century, characterizing the killings as a genocide. Turkey’s foreign ministry issued a statement before the vote saying that while the country acknowledges what it calls the “suffering of Armenians” during World War I, it “objects to the one-sided presentation of this tragedy as a genocide.”
Contrarian Policy
Trump has argued that his relations with Erdogan show the effectiveness of his contrarian vision for foreign policy.
He has frequently boasted of winning the release of an American pastor who had been detained in Turkey in 2018 after threatening sanctions that Trump says would have destroyed the country’s economy.
And following the Turkish offensive in Syria, Trump dispatched Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence to hastily negotiate a cease-fire. The fragile truce was initially effective, though it required the Kurds to surrender hundreds of square miles of territory while cementing Erdogan’s gains and allowing his government to escape U.S. sanctions.
Under the agreement, Kurdish YPG fighters that Erdogan’s government regards as terrorists were expected to evacuate a 75-mile stretch of Syria on Turkey’s border. Erdogan separately struck an agreement with the Kremlin for Kurdish forces to withdraw from a 22-mile region largely controlled by Russia.
There are signs that the peace is fraying. Erdogan complained at a news conference in Hungary on Thursday that neither Washington or Moscow “were able to get the terrorists to leave the region.”
But Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, insisted that the agreement was “a real diplomatic coup from the president” in a CBS News interview on Sunday. He downplayed concerns raised by lawmakers that Turkish forces or Turkish-backed militias had committed war crimes during the offensive, saying that Ankara “assured us those are being investigated.”
Trump said last week that Erdogan told him the Turks have “captured numerous ISIS fighters that were reported to have escaped during the conflict – including a wife and sister” of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid last month.
‘Very Upset’
The dispute over Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile system is expected to dominate Trump’s meeting with Erdogan. After Turkey began taking delivery of the batteries earlier this year, the U.S. suspended its participation in a joint program that produces the F-35 fighter jet out of concern the Russian equipment would give the Kremlin insight into one of the most advanced American weapons.
O’Brien said that Trump plans to tell Erdogan that the U.S. is “very upset” that he’s proceeded with buying the S-400, and threaten that if Turkey doesn’t get rid of the missiles, “there will likely be sanctions.”
Trump plans to address the issue head-on in his talks with Erdogan, emphasizing that resolving U.S. concerns over the missile system is crucial to unlocking other elements of the relationship, including the F-35 and ongoing trade negotiations, according to two senior U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
During President Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. offered to sell Turkey its Raytheon Co.-built Patriot air-defense missile. But Erdogan declined after the Obama administration refused to allow a technology transfer that would enable Turkey to develop and build its own missile batteries.
Trump has criticized Obama for the failed Patriot sale, and Erdogan hinted last week he’s ready to buy the American system if the terms are right.
“We bought the S-400, that job is done, but if the U.S. will give us the Patriots, then we can buy them as long as the conditions are suitable,” Erdogan said. “We’ve proposed this to them.”
Trump, who often measures U.S. relations with foreign countries by trade balances, has signaled that he’s eager to restore Turkey’s access to the F-35, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The country originally planned to order 100 of the next-generation jets, making it one of the plane’s top-four foreign customers.
Ten Turkish companies are expected to be suspended from making more than 900 parts for the F-35 that, over the program’s lifetime, could generate more than $9 billion in orders.
--With assistance from Mario Parker, Selcan Hacaoglu, Daniel Flatley and Josh Wingrove.
To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, Justin Blum
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