Turkey’s top diplomat to travel to US amid troubled ties

By SUZAN FRASER and ANDREW WILKS
Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and the United States will aim to smooth out a series of disagreements between the NATO allies when Turkey’s foreign minister visits this week. But expectations that outstanding issues can be resolved are low. Mevlut Cavusoglu departs for Washington on Tuesday for a meeting on Wednesday with U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken on a rare visit by a top Turkish official. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has kept a distance from Turkey because of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian direction and policies curbing rights and freedoms. The NATO allies frequently find themselves at odds over a number of issues. The biggest disputes center on Turkey’s purchase of Russian-made missiles and American support for Kurdish militants in Syria.