Turkey, US to hold talks on regional, bilateral issues

ANKARA

Francis Ricciardone, U.S. Ambassador to Ankara

High-level Turkish and American diplomats will hold meetings in Washington Monday and Tuesday to exchange views about bilateral, regional and global issues, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on June 7.

It informed that undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry Feridun Sinirlioğlu will pay a working visit to the United States where he will meet officials from the State Department, the National Security Council and other relevant institutions. It did not detail issues Sinirlioğlu would raise during his talks and his potential interlocutors in Washington.
 
Among issues that could be on the table are Syria crisis and recent signs of cooperation between Ankara and Washington over the foreign jihadists especially after Turkey declared al-Nusra a terrorist organization; the developments in Iraq and Turkey’s decision to release the Iraqi oil in Ceyhan without Baghdad’s consent; the Cyprus talks after vice President Joe Biden’s historic trip to the island and the ongoing tension between the West and Russia over Ukraine.     
 
U.S. Ambassador to Ankara, Francis Ricciardone, said the areas the two countries are cooperating on  “Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran in the context of nuclear program, Cyprus question and the normalization in Turkish-Israeli relations”. He said the work in those fields was being carried out with the means of “diplomacy, law enforcement [for example Turkey’s borders], intelligence and security.” The ambassador underlined that they “would not give details on intelligence” matters, but “important national security cooperation” was “going on.”
 
Sinirlioğlu’s visit to the U.S. is seen as important opportunity for the two countries to deepen this understanding of cooperation and to make it more efficient.