Erdogan and Trump

Amid bilateral tensions over various issues, US President Trump and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Saturday and according to the announcement made by the Turkish presidential office, they agreed to promote regional stability and to boost bilateral ties. The two leaders also agreed to meet in New York during the UN General Assembly due this month. The two countries are experiencing difficult relations at present, marked especially by Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurdish militia, YPG, as a local partner in the battle against Daesh; Ankara views YPG as a terrorist group. Another disagreement between Turkey and the US pertains to the requested extradition of Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is considered by Turkey as the mastermind behind last year’s failed coup attempt. Erdogan recently slammed the US over an indictment of Turkey’s former Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan on charges that he had conspired to help Iran violate US sanctions by illegally transferring hundreds of millions of dollars. Erdogan sees the indictment as a mistake and as a political move against Turkey. Claiming that Caglayan had not engaged in any wrongdoing, Erdogan told reporters as he was departing for Kazakhstan, “There are bad smells coming from behind this.” “I hope we’ll get a chance to discuss this issue in the United States. You may be a big nation, but being a just nation is something else. Being a just nation requires the legal system to work fairly,” he said. In addition to that, a US Senate committee on Thursday approved a measure to block the US government from supporting weapons sales to security forces protecting Erdogan. The move was in response to the violence against protesters that was carried out by Erdogan’s bodyguards during his visit to Washington this spring. A total of 19 people, including 15 Turkish security officials, have been indicted and this further complicates bilateral ties. Experts note that these key issues will top the agenda and will surely be raised by Erdogan during his upcoming meeting with Trump. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara office director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, thinks that the alliance between the two countries has been reduced to transactional cooperation based on mutual distrust and grievances. Even so, for Unluhisarcikli, there are several issues on which the two countries have mutual interests and other issues where they need to avoid collusion. “At this point, removing the Al-4aeda pres-