Ankara: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday stressed the importance of working with “right and legitimate” actors in the fight against terrorism during a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, sources in Erdogan’s office said.
At a meeting in Ankara, Tillerson and Erdogan also discussed potential joint steps against terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, primarily Daesh, the sources said.
Turkey has been incensed by US support for the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara sees as a hostile force, in the fight against Daesh in northern Syria.
Erdogan also discussed with Tillerson the extradition of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating a failed coup last July, as well as efforts to prevent the activities of the cleric’s network in the United States, the sources said.
The US and Turkey have one of the most complex diplomatic relationships.
Tillerson is spending a day in the Turkish capital seeking to shore up support from a crucial Nato ally in the fight against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. The US-led coalition fighting the group is backing Kurdish fighters as it prepares a campaign against the city of Raqqa, despite Turkish opposition.
Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, had no formal diplomatic experience before taking the secretary of state job, though he spent years cultivating relationships with leaders around the world as he sought oil deals.
Turkey is viewed as a critical North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally given its strategic geographic position between Europe and Asia, a bridge that has served as an entryway for refugees fleeing violence in Syria. The country hosts about 1,500 American military personnel and aircraft — as well as troops from Italy, Spain and elsewhere — at Incirlik Air Base, a staging point for the fight against Daesh.
Erdogan has been blunt about his opposition toward the US support for Kurdish fighters, whose separatist aims are shared by a militant Kurdish group that has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast for more than three decades. In an interview with Bloomberg last year, he said the US was “doing wrong before the eyes of the world” and endangering Turkey’s future by giving them weapons.
Turkish officials are also expected to protest the arrest in the US of a senior executive at one of Turkey’s largest state-owned banks on charges of conspiring to evade trade sanctions on Iran.
Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a deputy chief executive officer at Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, is accused of conspiring with Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader, to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the US financial system on behalf of Iran and its companies. He was arrested on Monday.
