FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TURKEY: “President Donald Trump, in hosting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House Tuesday [5-16-17], extended his latest warm welcome to an authoritarian-style leader who had a strained relationship with the previous US administration.
‘We’ve had a great relationship and we will make it even better,’ Trump said in the Oval Office as he sat beside Erdogan. ‘We look forward to having very strong and solid discussions.’
Despite Trump’s greeting to the Turkish leader, the relationship has been strained by the US refusal to extradite a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan blames for orchestrating a July coup attempt against him.
And the two countries are at odds over Trump’s decision to arm Kurdish militias that are helping in the fight to rout ISIS from its Syrian stronghold in Raqqa. Turkey sees these militias, which are widely seen as the most effective fighting force on the ground, as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group in the US, Turkey and Europe.“
-Nicole Gaouette, “Trump welcomes Erdogan amid US-Turkey strains,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 16, 2017