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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and the United States will aim to defuse a series of disagreements between the NATO allies when the Turkish foreign minister visits Washington this week . But expectations that outstanding issues can be resolved are low.

Mevlut Cavusoglu leaves on Tuesday for a meeting on Wednesday with his US counterpart Antony Blinken on a rare visit by a top Turkish official. The administration of US President Joe Biden has kept its distance from Turkey due to the increasingly authoritarian direction of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and policies that suppress rights and freedoms.

Positioned at the crossroads between East and West, Turkey remains strategically important for Washington. Last year, the Turkish government helped negotiate a crucial agreement between Russia and Ukraine that allowed millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to be transported to world markets, averting a food crisis amidst the war.

The NATO allies, however, often find themselves at odds over a number of issues, with the biggest disputes centering on Turkey’s purchase of Russian-made missiles and US support for militants. Kurds in Syria.

The acquisition of the S-400 air defense system in 2017 led to sanctions and Turkey was removed from the development program for the next-generation F-35 fighter jet. After losing the F-35, Ankara is currently trying to rebuild its F-16 fleet. But the deal faces opposition in Congress.

Cavusoglu appeared confident this week that the deal to buy 40 F-16 jets as well as technology to upgrade his existing fleet will overcome congressional hurdles.

“We reached an agreement with the (Biden) administration, and it is important that the administration emphasized that the agreement is not only important for Turkey but also for NATO,” Cavusoglu told reporters. “If the administration remains firm… then there will be no problem.”

US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel responded Friday to media reports that the Biden administration is also seeking congressional approval for shipping F-35s. to Greece, another NATO member and a neighbor growing increasingly irritated by Ankara’s threats.

“Türkiye and Greece are both vital and vital NATO allies and we have a history of, of course, supporting their security apparatus. But I’m not going to stand trial here,” Patel said, using the name of Turkey preferred by Erdogan’s government.

In Syria, US support for the Kurdish militant group YPG since 2014 has angered Ankara because of links between the YPG and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged an insurgency 39 years against Turkey and is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Support for the YPG has led senior Turkish officials to accuse Washington of links to terrorist attacks such as the November Istanbul bombing that killed six people.

US concerns about Ankara’s cozy relationship with the Kremlin have been heightened by the war in Ukraine. Despite Turkey’s ties with Moscow producing breakthroughs such as the grain deal and the prisoner swap, Washington is concerned about the sanctions being broken as trade levels between Turkey and Russia have increased over the last year.

Ankara’s foot-dragging over ratification bids by Sweden and Finland to join NATO has increased friction between the allies.

Turkey’s recent attempts at rapprochement with Syria after a decade of sour beginnings have opened another standoff with the U.S. Following a meeting of Syrian and Turkish defense ministers in Moscow last month, the Department of State of the United States reiterated its opposition to countries normalizing relations with Damascus.

On Thursday, the department’s chief spokesman, Ned Price, said during a regular media briefing that “we have not seen that this regime in Damascus has done anything to deserve normalization or to deserve improved relations.”

“Anyone who engages with the regime should ask how that engagement is benefiting the Syrian people — again, a people who have borne the vicious brunt of what their own government has inflicted on them,” Price added.

The US military also warned that a threatened Turkish operation against the YPG in northern Syria could destabilize the region and revive the Islamic State group.

In another ongoing dispute, the Supreme Court of the United States had to hear the case of Halkbank on Tuesday. The Turkish state lender is accused of money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy for allegedly helping Iran evade sanctions. The bank’s lawyers say the 2019 indictment is illegal under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

Andrew Wilks reported from Istanbul. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

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