Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Senior Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.
A Turkey expert reads between the lines of the latest meeting between the two presidents, assessing whether policy changes are afoot on Syria, the Kurds, and other issues.
The U.S. is trying to compartmentalize its relations with the YPG in Syria and the PKK in Turkey and Iraq. It is telling the Turks that if they look the other way in Syria, the U.S. will look the other way in Iraq where Turkey wants to fight the PKK. But the U.S. is also asking them not to do this right now, to wait until after Raqqa and Mosul are liberated. After that, the U.S. is signaling that it could even help the Turks to fight the PKK in Sinjar, Iraq...
