President Barack Obama will hold informal talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Washington this week, the White House says, dismissing suggestions that the lack of a formal meeting represented a snub to Ankara.
Erdogan will be among more than 50 world leaders attending a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on Thursday and Friday, during which time he is due to have a formal meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.
There had been intense speculation in the Turkish media over whether Obama would meet Erdogan, with some suggesting a failure to do so would mark a deliberate US snub amid differences over Syria and Washington's concerns over the direction of Turkey's domestic policies.
At a news conference in Istanbul before leaving for the United States earlier on Tuesday, Erdogan said a meeting with Obama at the nuclear summit was planned, although he said he did not know how long it would last.
Biden's office later said the vice president would host Erdogan for a meeting on Thursday in Washington.
"I would expect that over the course of the visit, the president will have an opportunity at some point to have at least an informal discussion with President Erdogan," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters travelling with Obama.
"There obviously is a lot of important work to do with our allies in Turkey ... It also includes continuing to intensify our coordination on key aspects of our counter-ISIL strategy, including ramped-up efforts to secure the Turkey-Syria border," he said.
ISIL is another name for the Sunni militant group Islamic State. Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Though allies, Washington and Ankara are sharply divided over a Kurdish militia in northern Syria. The militia has enjoyed US military support but Turkey, which has a large ethnic Kurdish minority in its conflict-riven southeast region, sees it as a threat to its own national security.
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged there were strains between the United States and Turkey on a range of issues, but added that Washington regards Ankara's assistance as essential to fighting Islamic State.
