Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a critical U.S. ally in the Muslim world, is struggling with the crisis in Syria, which has strained his country’s fast-growing economy, swamped it with hundreds of thousands of refugees and created unusually public friction with Washington.
The urgency of Erdogan’s concerns over Syria was underscored by Saturday’s car bombings that killed 46 people in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, where thousands of Syrian refugees have taken shelter. Erdogan’s government blamed the blasts on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — an allegation that Syrian officials quickly denied.
Erdogan and Obama, who will meet Thursday at the White House, have sharp disagreements on their approaches to Syria and other key Middle East issues, creating divisions between Obama and a man he has praised as a “bridge” between Washington and Muslim nations.
Erdogan has pressed Washington to provide military assistance to rebels trying to oust Assad, but Obama has resisted. Erdogan is expected to raise reports that Assad has used chemical weapons against the rebels to urge Obama to take a more aggressive stance.
Erdogan also wants to be more involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at a time when Washington prefers that he stay quiet. And U.S. officials have complained that Erdogan’s cool, even antagonistic, relations with Iraq have done little to help quell rising sectarian violence there and curb Baghdad’s ever-closer relations with Tehran.
Read more: Turkey’s Erdogan to air policy differences with Obama - The Washington Post
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