On Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden blamed Turkey and US allies for the rise of ISIS.
Biden made the remarks during a speech at Harvard. Biden accused Turkey and Gulf nations of funding terrorists for the cause.
Russia Today reported:
“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” he said, explaining that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were “so determined to take down Assad,” that in a sense they started a “proxy Sunni-Shia war” by pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons” towards anyone who would fight against Assad. “And we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”
On Saturday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demanded an apology from Joe Biden.
Nice work, Joe.
The Hurriyet Daily reported, via Free Republic:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has demanded an apology from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, if his reported comments about Turkey’s “mistakes that paved the way for the rise of the jihadists” were true.
“If Biden told these words, then he will be history for me. I never uttered such remarks,” Erdoğan said after the morning prayer for Eid al-Adha -the festival of sacrifice observed by Muslims all over the world- in Istanbul on early Oct. 4.
“President Erdoğan told me, he is an old friend, said you were right, we let too many people through, now we are trying to seal the border,” Biden had said during a speech on foreign policy at Harvard Kennedy School on Oct. 2, while complaining about the conduct of his country’s regional allies that led to the rise of the Islamic State and Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
“I was Prime Minister at the time. We absolutely didn’t provide even the smallest amount of support to any terrorist organization, including the ISIL. Nobody can prove it. Foreign fighters never crossed from Turkey to Syria. There were people coming to Turkey as tourists and went to Syria, but nobody can suggest that they were armed while crossing the border,” Erdoğan said.
Turkish President also stressed that Ankara’s “sensitivity” over the issue continues, as do its measures to prevent the jihadist flow into Syria.
