FOREIGN POLICY/NATO/SYRIA/TURKEY: “Western diplomats hope to use a high-level gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this week to keep members U.S. and Turkey from going to battle against each other in Syria.
They have already come close to direct conflict. Turkey, angered by U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish militants whom Ankara considers terrorists, has been fighting Kurds in one Syrian town and threatened to go after them in another—where several hundred U.S. Special Forces are deployed.
Stoking tensions, Turkish media reports citing unnamed officials have accused the U.S. of giving its Kurdish allies a rocket that killed five soldiers on Feb. 3. Turkey hasn’t said where it determined the rocket came from.
Raising the stakes for NATO, Turkey has stepped up its military coordination with Russia, the alliance’s chief rival. The dispute could push Ankara closer to Moscow’s orbit and further fray ties between Turkey and its traditional Western allies…
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will meet his Turkish counterpart at a NATO meeting that begins on Wednesday in Brussels, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to visit Turkey at the end of the week.”
-Emre Peker and Julian E. Barnes, “NATO to Try ‘Kitchen Table’ to Soothe U.S.-Turkey Dispute,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 11, 2018 08:00am