Strained U.S.-Turkey Ties as Trump and Erdogan Hold Meeting by Deb Riechmann – Associated Press
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…