WASHINGTON — Turkey is not among the more than 100 countries invited to participate in the Biden administration’s upcoming Summit for Democracy aimed at countering rising authoritarianism abroad and bolstering human rights. 

The three-day summit next week, which is co-hosted by the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia, is the second of Joe Biden’s presidency. Like the first-of-its-kind gathering in December 2021, this year’s summit is likely to draw criticism over why some countries with problematic rights records like India and the Philippines made the cut, while NATO allies Turkey and Hungary were excluded. 

A State Department spokesperson confirmed all governments that participated in the first summit received invitations for the second, with some additions, and stressed that the administration was “not seeking to define which countries are and aren’t democracies.”

The White House has yet to formally announce the participants, but Rob Berschinksi, the National Security Council’s senior director for human rights and democracy, confirmed to reporters that Turkey was omitted from the invite list.