ANTALYA, TURKEY – NOVEMBER 15: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, greets U.S President, Barack Obama during the official welcome ceremony on day one of the G20 Turkey Leaders Summit on November 15, 2015 in Antalya, Turkey. World leaders will use the summit to discuss issues including, climate change, the global economy, the refugee crisis and terrorism. The two day summit takes place in the wake of the massive terrorist attack in Paris which killed more than 120 people. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Source: Time
President Obama is set to hold talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China on Sunday, and there is a wealth of evidence that it will not be a comfortable meeting.
The sources of discord are many. Turkey—a U.S. and NATO ally—is currently engaged in a standoff with Kurdish-majority militias in northern Syria that are also backed by the U.S. Erdogan is also irritated with the U.S. for not immediately handing over Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based religious leader who stands accused of backing the failed military coup that rocked Turkey on July 15.
The stakes of a worsening American-Turkish faceoff are soaring. Further disagreement risks escalating the conflict in Syria, deepening Turkey’s own internal crisis and hampering the fight against ISIS. “I think that Obama will have a hard time, a rough time with Erdogan. Both issues are explosive and I am not sure that Obama is in better position to treat these two questions,” says Bayram Balci, a researcher at Sciences Po in Paris, referring to the duel crises over Gulen’s extradition and U.S.-support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.
Read More: Inside the Turkish Military’s Civil War
The two leaders face a sweeping and delicate set of military and geopolitical questions with few obvious answers. On Aug. 20, a suicide bomber killed more than 50 people at a wedding party in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep. Turkey blamed the attack on ISIS, which is believed to have carried out a series of lethal attacks inside Turkey, including the devastating gun and bomb assault on Istanbul’s main airport in June. In an apparent response to the Gaziantep bombing, Turkey sent tanks and warplanes to back a force of Syrian rebel fighters to retake the town of Jarabulus from ISIS, marking Turkey’s most direct intervention in Syria to date.
The incursion also placed Turkish forces in close proximity to a rival group, the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are led by a Kurdish-majority militia called the People’s Protection Units (known by the acronym YPG). With the help of U.S. airstrikes, the YPG and its allies had retaken the key town of Manbij from ISIS earlier in August, prompting scenes of celebration as residents celebrating the end of jihadi rule by trimming their beards and smoking cigarettes—both forbidden by ISIS.
Categories: America, Middle East, The Muslim Times, Turkey, USA
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