US President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Erdogan held a bilateral meeting on Monday following a meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels, Ahval news reported.
The meeting, which took place at the NATO headquarters in Belgium, was expected to be contentious. Biden in April became the first US president in decades to recognize the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide — a move that risked a potential fracture with Turkey but signaled a commitment to global human rights. Biden told reporters that much of the meeting was one-on-one and said the interactions were “positive and productive.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in turn, said the issue of the Armenian Genocide did not come up during his meeting with Joe Biden on Monday.
“Thank goodness, the issue never came up,’’ T24 news site cited Erdogan as saying in response to a question, which has been a source of contention between Ankara and Washington.
