Reuters, 11 May 2017 – US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated on Thursday Washington’s commitment to protecting NATO ally Turkey after a meeting with the Turkish prime minister in London.

Mattis’s roughly half-hour meeting with Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım in the British capital was the highest-level meeting since Washington announced its decision to arm Kurdish fighters in Syria. Both men were attending a conference on Somalia.

On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the United States to immediately reverse a decision on arming Syrian Kurdish fighters considered by Ankara to be a terror group.