Ties with Turkey very critical to US: Senior official

A senior American official has described ties with Turkey as very critical and significant despite ongoing differences in various issues, including the U.S. support to the YPG and Turkey's deployment of the Russian air defense systems, while recalling that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss all the aspects of ties in a frank and direct way when they meet in mid-June.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, in an exclusive interview with the Hürriyet Daily News on the occasion of her visit to Ankara on May 28, elaborated the Turkish-American relationship in depth.

How would you define the current state of Turkish-American relations, which have been passing through difficult times?

The relationship with Turkey is a very critical one to the U.S. Turkey is a NATO partner, a strategic ally, a force in the world, and someone that we work very hard with in Afghanistan and in Libya to work to make sure that everybody in the world, including Russia and China, for instance, adhere to the global world order. Turkey is also a very important business and trade partner. So, I think this summit, this meeting between President Erdoğan and President Biden, is very important to put on a stamp on what all is good for our relationship. It's also going to be a time where I'm sure that the president will raise concerns everyone is well aware that we have around human rights and democracy and what the trajectory of Turkey is as it moves into the future.

The U.S. sanctioned Turkey over the S-400s but imposed a waiver to Germany over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Isn't it a sort of double standard?

There are very different laws that apply to Nord Stream 2 and to what's...