Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that he would not meet with visiting Vice President Mike Pence, but later in the day Erdogan’s office said he would meet with Pence on Thursday.
Erdogan told Sky News during a Wednesday interview that he would not meet with Pence or any other U.S. official except President Donald Trump.
“I am standing tall. I will not meet with them,” Erdogan said. “They will meet with their counterparts. I will speak when Trump comes.”
Erdogan made these remarks after delivering a defiant speech to the Turkish parliament in which he rejected international criticism of his incursion into Syria and declared he could not be persuaded or intimidated into halting the operation. He said the invasion would only be halted if Syrian Kurdish forces agreed to withdraw to beyond 20 miles from the Turkish border and clear a 550-mile stretch of the Iraqi-Turkish border, including the strategic city of Manbij.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is traveling to Turkey with Pence, insisted the two had “every expectation that we will meet with President Erdogan.”
“We need them to stand down. We need a ceasefire. At which point, we can begin to put this all back together again,” Pompeo said, despite Erdogan’s insistence that no ceasefire would be offered until the Kurds meet his demands.
Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, said on Wednesday that Erdogan changed his mind and would meet with Pence.
“Earlier today, the president told Sky News that he won’t receive a U.S. delegation that is visiting Ankara today. He does plan to meet the U.S. delegation led by VP Pence,” Altun said on Twitter.
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