Turkish president to meet with US counterpart at White House in May

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with US President Joe Biden at the White House on May 9.

Erdogan’s impending visit to Washington occurs as the Israel-Hamas war continues in Gaza and after Iran and Israel attacked each other’s territory, generating fears that a wider Middle East conflict could be approaching, Bloomberg reports citing people familiar with the matter.

The two leaders are also meeting at a delicate time in their political careers. Biden faces a rematch with his 2020 opponent, former President Donald Trump, in November’s election. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll this week found that Biden’s ahead in just one of the seven states most likely to determine the outcome.

Late last month, Erdogan, who has led Türkiye since 2003, suffered an embarrassing defeat in municipal elections, with voters across the nation turning against his AK party. Although parallels cannot be easily drawn, in both countries inflation has contributed to a sense of gloom and anger at the governments in power.

Erdogan, however, continues to play a prominent role on the international stage. On April 26, for instance, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte plans to visit Istanbul to seek the Turkish president’s support to become the next secretary general of NATO.

Last weekend, Erdogan met with Hamas’s political leader to discuss a potential permanent cease-fire and accelerated humanitarian aid to Gaza. Unlike the US and the European Union, Türkiye doesn’t consider Hamas a terrorist organisation.

Earlier this year, Türkiye resolved a dispute with the US that had held up the sale of F-16 warplanes. In a delicately orchestrated arrangement, Ankara agreed to support Sweden’s membership in NATO, and Greece buying fighters from the US.

Biden explicitly made Türkiye’s approval of Sweden’s NATO membership a prerequisite for the sale of the F-16 jets.

Greece and Türkiye, though both members of NATO, have long been regional rivals and their governments recently signed an agreement to foster “friendly relations” after generations of acrimony.