{"id":9925,"date":"2009-03-08T22:42:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-08T19:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=9925"},"modified":"2014-01-01T20:53:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T18:53:48","slug":"9925","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/03\/08\/9925\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama to visit Turkey in next few weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) <\/strong>&#8212; President Obama plans to visit Turkey in about a month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets Saturday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n<p>Clinton was holding talks in Ankara with officials &#8220;to emphasize the work the United States and Turkey must do together on behalf of peace, prosperity and progress,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Obama had said he was going to deliver a speech in a Muslim capital within the first hundred days of his presidency. Clinton did not say that Obama would be making such a speech during this visit.<\/p>\n<p>A senior Obama administration official confirmed that Turkey will be the president&#8217;s first visit to a Muslim nation since taking office, but did not provide dates for the president&#8217;s upcoming visit to Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>This official did say the visit would be &#8220;an important opportunity to visit a NATO ally and discuss shared challenges.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The official added that &#8220;it will also provide an opportunity to continue the president&#8217;s dialogue with the Muslim world, a dialogue he started immediately and intends to maintain throughout his presidency.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The State Department on Saturday issued a joint statement from Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan reaffirming the close U.S.-Turkish relationship.<\/p>\n<p>Both countries pledged to pursue an Arab-Israeli peace settlement, peace in the southern Caucasus region, normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and a settlement of the Cyprus question &#8212; a dispute between Greek and Turkish Cypriots over territory.<\/p>\n<p>They vowed to enhance the fight against terror groups such as al Qaeda and the Kurdistan Workers&#8217; Party and work to expand the natural gas and oil infrastructure to help Caspian basin and Iraqi energy producers reach European and world markets.<\/p>\n<p>Turkey is a secular country and predominantly Muslim. It is a NATO member and has been a longtime ally of the United States. It is one of the few <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/topics.cnn.com\/topics\/Islam\"><strong title=\"blocked::http:\/\/topics.cnn.com\/topics\/Islam\">Muslim<\/strong><\/span> countries to have full diplomatic relations with Israel and has long been the Jewish state&#8217;s closest military and economic partner in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) &#8212; President Obama plans to visit Turkey in about a month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets Saturday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Clinton was holding talks in Ankara with officials &#8220;to emphasize the work the United States and Turkey must do together [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":49467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[145,1018],"class_list":["post-9925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-barack-obama","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}