Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be in Washington next week for what diplomats are billing as the most crucial talks in recent times between the two countries concerning developments in the Middle East, with the crisis in Syria topping the bill. The talks with US President Barack Obama on May 16 will also cover Iran, Iraq, the Middle East peace process, Turkish-Israeli ties and Erdogan’s controversial visit to Gaza at the end of May.

There are issues, of course, over which the two countries are in disagreement, such as the Gaza visit and Ankara’s developing ties with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq that Washington frowns upon. In turn, Ankara is disappointed with Washington’s failure to act more robustly against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The general mood of the one-day talks is nevertheless expected to be “positive” and “cooperative,” rather than “confrontational,” according to Foreign Ministry officials in Ankara who spoke with Al-Monitor.

Talking to reporters while flying to Brussels for a NATO summit at the end of April, a highly upbeat Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the talks between Erdogan and Obama were expected to take up the entire day because “the nature of the matter has changed,” as he put it. “The way of looking at Turkey, the perception has changed because history is seen to be flowing in this region today and we are the only country that can guide it,” he said.

Despite such inflated remarks, Erdogan still has something of a delicate balancing act to perform in Washington. On Syria, however, he has the upper hand, as those in the Obama administration advising that the Syrian opposition be provided heavy weapons are reportedly gaining ground after claims that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.