Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan backed off his refusal to meet with a delegation sent by President Trump to try to stem the bloodshed in Turkey, confirming later Wednesday that he will talk with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Earlier today, the President told @SkyNews 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 tomorrow,” his spokesman Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.

Pence, Pompeo and national security adviser Robert O’Brien will press Erdogan to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria when they arrive in Ankara.

“At this point, the vice president and I are planning to take off later this afternoon,” Pompeo told Fox Business. “And we have every expectation that we will meet with President Erdogan. And it’s important … we need to have this conversation with him directly.”

Erdogan earlier in the day said the US delegation would meet with their Turkish counterparts and he wouldn’t engage in any discussion unless it was one-on-one with Trump.

The Turkish president, who has already dismissed calls to negotiate a cease-fire, also agreed to accept an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to travel to Moscow as soon as the end of October.

In a statement, Putin’s office said the two leaders need to discuss how “to prevent confrontations between units of the Turkish army and Syrian armed forces.”

Kurdish forces that are targeted by Erdogan’s incursion into northern Syria cut a deal with Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for protection.

The militia group had been a US ally and assisted American troops in the fight against the Islamic State.

Trump, in a phone call earlier this month, told Erdogan he would remove US troops in the region, giving him the go-ahead to launch the invasion.

Ankara considers the Kurds terrorists who are aligned with an insurgent force that has been battling the government inside Turkey for decades.

A defiant Erdogan said his troops will not stop their assault until they complete their mission to create a “safe zone” about 20 miles wide in northeastern Syria.

“We informed the US, EU and Russia before the operation began that … we want this terrorist organization to be removed from our borders,” he said. “When the zone from Manbij to Iraq [is cleared] when we could establish a safe zone, this operation will be over. But until that point, no power can stop us.”

If the Kurds surrender, the incursion will end.

“Our proposal is for the terrorists to lay down their arms, leave their equipment, destroy the traps they have created and leave the safe zone we as designated, as of tonight,” Erdogan said. “If this is done, our Operation Peace Spring will end by itself.”

With Post wires