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Tillerson Meets Turkish Officials amid Tensions with US

Tillerson Meets Turkish Officials amid Tensions with US
folder_openTurkey access_time6 years ago
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US State Secretary Rex Tillerson held talks on Sunday with Turkish leaders in Istanbul on issues ranging from Syria to last year's failed coup.

Tillerson Meets Turkish Officials amid Tensions with US

After arriving from Ukraine, Tillerson met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and later held talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, officials on both sides said.

No statement was issued after the late night talks at the Istanbul residence of Erdogan by the Bosphorus.

Tillerson, the former chief executive of energy giant Exxon Mobil, earlier addressed the opening ceremony of the World Petroleum Congress, notably mentioning the defeat of last year's failed coup against Erdogan.

"Nearly a year ago, the Turkish people, brave men and women, stood up against coup plotters and defended their democracy," Tillerson said.

Turkey's relations with the United States plummeted in the final months of former president Barack Obama's administration but Ankara has hoped for an improvement under Donald Trump.

It is however furious that Trump continued and even expanded Obama's policy of supporting the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units [YPG] as the main fighting force on the ground in Syria against Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Takfiri ‘ISIS/ISIL' group] terrorists.

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK] has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

But Washington is openly arming the YPG, which is involved in the US-backed operation to oust Daesh terrorists from their stronghold of Raqqa.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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