Joe Biden was “was forced to apologize over the weekend to leaders of both Turkey and the United Arab Emirates after suggesting in the speech at Harvard that these two countries and another ally — Saudi Arabia — were the United States’ “biggest problem” in responding to the Syrian civil war.” The Washington Post,
“The Turks, who are great friends — I have a great relationship with (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan, whom I spend a lot of time with — the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” Biden said, according to AP.
Biden added: “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”
Biden also said Erdogan admitted to him that Turkey “let too many [foreign fighters] through” into neighboring Syria.
Needless to say, these are some pretty serious allegations. And they were met with some understandably hard feelings from countries who are supposed to be allies…
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