The details of the meeting were not immediately available at the time Today's Zaman went to print. The meeting is significant amid a wave of protests sweeping across the Middle East and recent political developments in Turkey, over which the US has expressed some concerns.
Ricciardone received a barrage of criticism from the government when he said last month that the US is trying to make sense of Turkey's stated support for freedom of the press and the detention of journalists. “On the one hand there exists a stated policy supporting a free press. On the other hand, journalists are put in detention. We are trying to make sense of this,” Ricciardone told reporters in response to a question about a police raid on anti-government website odatv.com.
Ricciardone came under further criticism from the government when Erdoğan accused him of being a “novice” on Turkish matters. Erdoğan said the US ambassador should have examined the situation more carefully before commenting on the case, saying that what Ricciardone did amounted to being a “novice ambassador.”
