PM Erdoğan’s meeting with Biden uncertain

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Erdoğan’s program was not finalized as he was recovering following a surgery. AFP photo

As United States Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled to land in Ankara late Thursday, his meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was still not fixed due to the Turkish premier’s health conditions.
 
“The two can still meet in Istanbul depending on the prime minister’s doctors’ consent,” a source from the prime minister’s office told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

Biden was set to arrive in Turkey for two days of talks with President Abdullah Gül and Erdoğan. He will also attend an entrepreneurship conference with the Turkish prime minister Saturday in Istanbul.

However, Erdoğan’s program was not finalized late Thursday as he was recovering in his home in Istanbul after the Nov. 26 surgery on his digestive system. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, who held a phone conversation with the prime minister yesterday, said Erdoğan would probably return to his office Monday to chair the weekly cabinet meeting. Arınç said Erdoğan’s state of health was very good.

Despite Arınç’s words, prime ministry sources said Erdoğan’s return to Ankara on Monday was not a definite decision and Arınç’s statement “is not based on a medical assessment” by doctors. The prime minister is “unlikely to deliver a speech” at the Second Global Summit on Entrepreneurship on Saturday, which figures on the program of the event, the source said.

Biden will have talks with Gül today in Ankara and then will travel to Istanbul for the summit.