U.S. President Joe Biden is marginalising Turkey by not inviting it to a democracy summit to be held in Washington D.C. next month, columnist Hakkı Öcal said.
Biden has left countries including Turkey out of the summit simply because they are not doing what they are told, Öcal wrote for Daily Sabah on Monday.
“Turkey is doing what it thinks it should be doing,” he said.
Bilateral relations between Turkey and the United States have hit an historical low point over Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defence system in 2019, its deteriorating human rights record, which resulted in the detention of a U.S. pastor on terrorism charges three years ago, and differences over Syria and Libya.
Biden, who has criticised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies, has vowed to make human rights a central plank of his administration’s foreign policy.
Turkey has arrested tens of thousands of people on terrorism charges since a failed military coup in 2016. The authorities have intensified a crackdown on the political opposition since presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, when Erdoğan gained vast new executive powers following a nationwide referendum marred by opposition accusations of vote-rigging.
While Biden says he is determined to defend and strengthen democracy, he is continuing the American tradition of supporting coups around the world, from Iran in 1953 to Bolivia in 2019, Öcal said.
According to the last count, Washington has backed “64 covert and six overt coups”, he said.
“It should not matter what the democracies do. As the saying goes, we should be doing what they say not what they do,” Öcal said.
Öcal said that Ankara is no longer dependent on crumbs from U.S. tables, pointing to Turkey’s strengthening defence industry.
“On behalf of Mr. Biden who is marginalising Turkey by not inviting it to the democracy conference, Turkey kindly thanks all those who have placed it on their embargo and sanctions lists,” he said.
Ahval