Erdogan issued his congratulatory message for President-elect Biden’s "success" in the elections on Nov. 10, four days delay after major U.S. news networks called the race for the Democratic Party.

In the run up to the U.S. elections in November 2020, Turkish officials attacked Biden for his newly-resurfaced New York Times interview, in which Biden advocated for a decisive U.S. policy against Erdogan and vowed to assist Turkish opposition elements to win at the next elections if he became president.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in August of 2020, accused Biden of abetting terrorists against Turkey, and playing an unspecified role in an attempted coup against Erdogan's government in July 2016. There are other Turkish government officials similarly attacked then-U.S. presidential candidate Biden.

According to Ahval Psaki said Biden hadn’t called many world leaders to date and that “he still needs to call, and he will venture to do that in the coming weeks and months.”

Responding to a follow up question, Psaki simply said Biden would call Erdogan “at some point”.

Erdogan has been able to strike a friendly tone with all previous U.S. presidents since he came to power in 2002. The same year, before the elections that catapulted his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power, Erdogan even visited then-president George W. Bush as a party leader.

In 2009, when Barack Obama was elected, Turkey was the first country to host the new U.S. president on a bilateral overseas visit. In 2016, President Donald J. Trump received Erdogan's phone call within 24 hours of his election victory, and the pair remained close allies until Trump was ousted in the Nov. 3 elections.

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