Bracing for a make-or-break meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains squeezed between an imposing need for a thaw in his fraught ties with Washington and the task of selling it to his fold at home, where anti-American sentiment is running high, not least because he has often fueled it himself.
The two leaders are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels on June 14 in what would be their first face-to-face encounter since Biden became president, stripping Erdogan of a cozy rapport with the White House under Donald Trump.