Oct 6, 2014

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received an instant public apology from the White House following US Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks Oct. 2 at the Harvard Kennedy School. Biden delivered his personal apology to Erdogan via telephone Oct. 4, and the White House issued a statement saying that Biden did not intend to imply that Turkey “intentionally” facilitated terrorists. While this apology — after a student questioned whether the United States should have acted earlier in Syria and why this is the right time now — has not yet appeared on the White House website, its YouTube audio upload of Biden’s speech includes one problematic segment (at the 1 hour, 32-minute mark).

The question is in fact a perfect reflection of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s approach to the Syrian dilemma. “No one has neither the right nor the license to criticize Turkey,” Davutoglu said Oct. 4. “The US administration and Joe Biden know too well that Turkey has been continuing to provide a safe haven to the [Syrian] refugees for four years, and if our warnings had been heeded at the beginning, we would not be living these tragedies today.”

Biden, however, expressed an unmitigated disagreement with this assumption. The vice president said at the Harvard Kennedy School, “The answer is no for two reasons. One, the idea of identifying a moderate middle has been a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. We Americans think in every country in transition there is a Thomas Jefferson hiding beside some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune. The fact of the matter is the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria — there was no moderate middle, because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers. They are made up of people who in fact have ordinary elements of the middle class in that country. And what happened was and history will record this …

“What my constant cry was is that our biggest problem is our allies. Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends. And I have a great relationship with Erdogan [whom] I just spent a lot of time with. The Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do?

“They poured hundreds and millions of dollars and tens and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were [Jabhat] al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. Now you think I'm exaggerating. Take a look: Where did all of this go? So now what's happening? All of a sudden, everybody is awakened because … [IS] which was al-Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in ... eastern Syria, worked with al-Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now, all of a sudden, I don’t want to be too facetious, but they have seen the Lord! Now ... the president's been able to put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors, because America can't once again go into a Muslim nation and be the aggressor. It has to be led by Sunnis to go and attack a Sunni organization. So what do we have for the first time?”