Blinken to promise shake support on first Turkey visit
Thursday Feb 16 2023
The top American representative will also attend the Munich Security Conference.
The US flew 200 heroes and contributed 85 million dollars for relief for Turkey.
Blinken visiting Turkey after more than two years in office.
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Turkey on Sunday to survey support after the massive earthquake, his most memorable trip to a NATO partner with a strained relationship with Washington.
Blinken will visit Incirlik Air Base, through which the U.S. has sent aid, and then hold talks in the capital Ankara about "continuing U.S. support," State Department spokesman Ned Cost said Wednesday.
The top US official will also attend the Munich security meeting, where the Ukrainian war and pressures with China will become a dominant focus, and visit Turkey's arch-rival Greece, a single NATO partner.
The US brought in about 200 heroes and contributed a core $85 million in aid to Turkey, which flew Dark Bird of prey and Chinook helicopters to transport supplies to the worst affected areas.
The visit, which was arranged before the Feb. 6 earthquake that killed nearly 40,000 individuals in the country and neighboring Syria, will be Blinken's first to Turkey in more than two years in office.
President Joe Biden was elected after promising to distance himself more from his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who Biden recently called a dictator.
Still, the Biden organization has since seen Turkey as supportive of a mediation job between Russia and Ukraine, keeping in mind the arrangement to ship grain across the Dark Ocean to ease world shortages.
The Biden organization has expressed support for Turkey's call to buy candidate streams of F-16s, but the deal is being held up in Congress over concerns about Turkey's common liberties and dangers to Greece.
The US has been looking for ways to empower Erdogan to remove its problems with the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, which have shed their former impartiality since Russia attacked Ukraine.
Turkey has been a key fallback, with Erdogan forcing Sweden to crack down on Kurdish aggressors, who Ankara sees as psychological militants.
After signs of progress, Erdogan reignited his problems with Sweden after a protest outside the Turkish consulate in Stockholm in which a far-right dissident burned Islam's holy book, the Koran.
The United States has also recently been assessed by Turkey's acquisition of a high-level airspace defense framework from Moscow, saying it could help NATO's arch-enemy with a focus on Western fighter jets.
Blinken is expected to talk about tensions with Turkey when he makes a trip to Athens on Monday, although the temperature has cooled since the earthquake as Greece helps its neighbour.
Blinken will begin his trip on Thursday in Frankfurt before heading to the Munich security meeting, an annual gathering of pioneers that takes place seven days before the commemoration of Russia's attack on Ukraine.
In Munich, Blinken will join Vice President Kamala Harris, who is essential to the large number of US officials visiting Europe around the celebration, with Biden due in Poland in a week.
Also expected in Munich is China's top negotiator Wang Yi, offering the expected opportunity to meet with Blinken, despite US officials saying nothing has been chosen.
Blinken was on a recent move to Beijing as part of the main excursion by a top US official in more than four years, aimed at preventing tensions between the world's two largest economies from escalating.
Yet he unexpectedly abandoned the trip after the US said a Chinese surveillance wave, later destroyed, had been spotted over the US central region.