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Strained US-Turkey Ties as Trump and Erdogan Hold Meeting

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyip
   Erdogan, met Wednesday as relations between the NATO allies have fallen
   to their lowest point in decades, with Turkey drifting closer to Russia
   and facing a Washington backlash over its military offensive against
   Kurds in Syria.

   Erdogan and Trump had a difficult agenda for their talks: Turkey's
   decision to buy a Russian air defense system despite Turkey's
   membership in NATO and its incursion into neighboring Syria to attack
   Kurdish forces that have fought with the U.S. against the Islamic State
   group.

   Despite those disputes, Trump said the two countries were poised to
   increase U.S. goods and services trade with Turkey, which totaled about
   $24 billion in 2017.

   "We're going to be expanding," Trump said. "We think we can bring trade
   up very quickly to about $100 billion between our countries."

   The leaders' scheduled afternoon news conference, following a meeting
   with Republican lawmakers at the White House, would give Trump a stage
   to counter the first public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry.

   Sitting in the Oval Office with Erdogan, Trump said he was too busy to
   watch the televised hearing on the inquiry, which he called a "hoax."

   Trump defended his decision to invite Erdogan despite Turkey's widely
   denounced advance into Syria. He said that he and Turkey's president
   have been "very good friends" for a long time and understand each
   other's country.

   "I understand the problems that they've had, including many people from
   Turkey being killed in the area that we're talking about and he has to
   do something about that," Trump said.

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