Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will visit the United States on May 9, a Turkish security official said on Friday, setting the stage for his first White House meeting under the Biden administration.
The visit to Washington would be Erdogan’s first since 2019, when he met then-President Donald Trump, with whom he had good personal ties. Since the election of US President Joe Biden in 2020, Ankara has been looking for another in-person meeting.
Ties between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, long strained by differences on a range of issues, have improved since Ankara ratified Sweden’s application for NATO membership in January, after a delay of 20 months that caused frustration in Washington.
However, tensions persist, including in northern Syria, where US forces are allied with Kurdish militants that Ankara considers terrorists. Washington has also pressured Ankara to do more to stop the transit of goods to Russia that it says are being used in Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
The official provided no further information on the visit, but said Turkey’s top intelligence official, Ibrahim Kalin, would meet with members of the U.S. House of Representatives for talks on the planned visit and other bilateral issues.
There was no immediate comment from Washington or the U.S. Embassy in Ankara on the visit.
Source: Terra
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