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US Vice President to hold talks with Turkish leaders

US Vice President Joe Biden is due in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Over the next two days Biden will be holding talks with both Turkey's president and prime minister. Much of the discussion is expected to be on Syria's civil war, as plans for warring sides to meet next week in Geneva are under wider international dispute.

View of Ankara, Turkey
View of Ankara, Turkey Wikipedia
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The fight against the Islamic State group is expected to top the agenda in the talks between Biden and the Turkish leadership.

Although Ankara and Washington both have an interest in defeating the Islamic State group, also known as Daesh, analysts say the U.S. vice president is navigating a delicate situation for a number of reasons.

According Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the director of the German Marshall Fund's office in Ankara,  the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) is but one of several thorny issues to cause mistrust between the US and Turkey.

"In the campaign against Daesh, Turkey is concerned about the role the United States is attributing to PYD. Turkey is not happy with the plans to give PYD a seat at the table," Unluhisarcikli told RFI.

"But also the future role of [Syrian President] Assad during the transition period might become one of the potential disagreements between Turkey and the United States."

Unluhisarcikli said Biden would be looking for Ankara to put pressure on Syrian opposition groups, as Washington hopes to get all sides moving toward a political transition:

"Turkey has been assisting parts of the opposition in many ways - financially, politically, et cetera - and I don't want to use the word proxies here, but there are certain groups in Syria on which Turkey can be very effective."

"The U.S. vice president's visit to Turkey is a delicate one, because Turkey officially joined the coalition against ISIS and of course has given base rights to the U.S. air force [...] That's the positive side," according to Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and a former ambassador to both Turkey and Syria.

"But at the same time, Turkey has not yet stretched the remaining seal of its border with Syria; which is under the control of ISIS. And this is a lifeline of ISIS. This is where ammunition and fighters come in. This is where smuggled oil goes out. And for its own reasons, which are linked to ISIS itself and to countering the advance of the Syrian Kurds, Turkey has not sealed that border."

On Wednesday a Syrian opposition council backed by Saudi Arabia said it would not attend next week's peace negotiations with the Syrian government if a third group takes part -- a reference to a Russian bid to widen the opposition's team.

"Russia's intervention in Syria in September changed the game very deeply, because they thought that the Assad regime was about to collapse militarily," Pierini told RFI. "If you look at the actions of Russian bombings, it is basically between the western part of Syria controlled by the Assad regime and the rest. So that is where Russia is concentrating its efforts.

"Now when it comes to the political settlement, Russia has an idea of who is an opponent to Assad which is somewhat different from the Western community's idea. Also Russia insists on presidential elections.

"But of course in a country where you have four and a half million people outside as refugees and more than eight million people inside as displaced persons, how do you run an election?"

In a speech to ambassadors in Paris on Thursday, French president Francois Hollande said despite disagreements on which groups should attend Monday's talks in Geneva, " the key question of who will govern Syria should not be avoided."

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