US President Joe Biden is still keeping his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan waiting for a phone call, but Washington has recently cheered Ankara up by casting a role for Turkey in peace efforts in Afghanistan.

A US plan for Turkey to host a meeting to finalize a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban is not an unlikely choice, as Turkey is the sole Muslim-majority member of NATO, which maintains a military mission in Afghanistan. As such, Turkey’s possible mediation might prove more effective than that of Qatar. But given the chill between the Biden administration and Ankara, the US move could be seen also as a gesture of goodwill or an attempt at mending a damaged partnership.

A US-Taliban deal, signed in February 2020 under the Donald Trump administration, requires all American troops to leave Afghanistan by May 1, but the Biden administration is still weighing its options on how to proceed. At this critical junction, Washington has called for an international meeting under UN auspices, intra-Afghan talks in Turkey and a 90-day reduction-in-violence in Afghanistan, hoping to muster utmost international support for peace in the war-torn country. During talks in Kabul in early March, US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad shared a settlement draft that calls for a new, interim administration until a new constitution is agreed upon and elections held, while a joint commission monitors a cease-fire, according to Reuters.

Since last year’s deal, the Afghan government and the Taliban have mutually released thousands of prisoners, while Washington has downsized its troops to 2,500. Intra-Afghan peace talks began in Doha in September, but have since stalled without any real progress. To continue the talks, the Taliban have called for the release of 7,500 prisoners and the removal of their leaders from international blacklists. And while Kabul wants to negotiate a cease-fire first, the Taliban say a deal on interim power-sharing should precede the truce. Moreover, the Taliban insist on replacing the existing “Islamic republic” with an “Islamic emirate.”