ROME (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will warn Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting on Sunday that any precipitous actions would not benefit U.S.-Turkish relations and that crises should be avoided, a U.S. official said on Saturday.
Erdogan earlier this month ordered 10 envoys to be declared “persona non grata” for seeking the release of jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala, before withdrawing the threat.
“Certainly the president will indicate that we need to find a way to avoid crises like that one going forward and precipitous action is not going to benefit the U.S.-Turkey partnership and alliance,” the official told reporters.
Biden, who is in Rome for the G20 summit, will also discuss Turkey’s request to purchase F-16 fighter jets, its defence relationship with the United States as well as a range of regional issues such as Syria and Libya.
U.S. lawmakers have urged the Biden administration not to sell F-16s to Turkey and threatened to block any such exports, on the grounds that Turkey had purchased Russian missile defence systems and “behaved like an adversary”.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Turkey had made a request to the United States to buy 40 Lockheed Martin-made F-16s and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; editing by Michel Rose, Toby Chopra and Giles Elgood)
