Biden is primarily to meet with top Turkish government officials in his two-day visit on Syria and other regional crises. But he began with sharp criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on journalists, political opponents and academics on Friday, including the recent arrest of dozens of academics who questioned government violence in Turkey’s ethnic Kurdish region.
Speaking at the beginning of a private meeting with Turkish journalists and civil society representatives, Biden praised US-Turkish cooperation. But “when the media are intimidated or imprisoned for critical reporting, when Internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites . . . shut down, when more than 1,000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition,” he said, “that’s not the kind of example that needs to be set in the region.”
Critics at home have accused the Obama administration of downplaying human rights abuses here as it seeks Turkey’s full cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Biden also defended US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass, who has come under official fire here for speaking in support of the petitioners. “He speaks for my . . . government, he speaks for the American people,” Biden said of Bass, the Washington Post reported.
During an earlier meeting with Turkish lawmakers from a range of political parties, Biden said that the United States supported Turkey’s fight against militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, but noted that the Turkish government’s policy of using force against militant-allied villages in the southeastern Kurdish region was not sustainable.