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White House provides lifeline to US ties with Turkey and Saudi Arabia

Turkish and Saudi leaders look to Trump to prevent relations with the United States from going bad to worse.
dpatop - 28 June 2019, Japan, Osaka: Recep Tayyip Erdogan (l-r), President of Turkey, Donald Trump, President of the United States of America (USA), Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdelasis al-Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, stand side by side in the group picture at the start of the G20 summit. The heads of state and government of the 19 leading industrialised and emerging countries and the European Union will meet at the G20 summit in Osaka (Japan) on 28 and 29 June 2

The Trump administration scrambled this week to soften the impact of bipartisan legislation that would sanction Turkey and Saudi Arabia. 

The White House is the last defense against both sanctions and even more friction in bilateral relations with both countries. Long considered pillars of US national security policy in the region, the Congressional consensus on Turkey and the kingdom has frayed as a result of the war in Yemen, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Turkish attack on the United States' Kurdish partners in Syria, and Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

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