U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he didn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin would go to talks in Turkey with Ukraine if he wasn’t there.

MUSTAFA KUTLAY is a Senior Lecturer at City St George’s, University of London, a Senior Scholar at Istanbul Policy Center, and a co-author, with Mina Toksoz and William Hale, of Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return.

Turkey's finance minister said the country's economic transformation was on track and that the country was prepared to deal with slower growth.

For Turkey, peace with the PKK now would further reduce a weakened Iran’s ability to project power westward. Some groups suspected of being affiliated with the PKK, such as the Sinjar Resistance Units in northern Iraq, have been indirectly supported by Iran.

That meeting wasn’t going to take place,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I insisted that that meeting take place, and it is taking place.”

Two recent developments present the new Syrian government with a critical opportunity to stabilize the country. First, US President Donald Trump announced plans to lift sanctions on Syria. Second, the Kurdistan Workers' Party declared it would disband and dissolve itself — a move that will help Damascus to finalize a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces and integrate it into the new Syrian national army.

It began in Riyadh with Trump saying he wanted to make a deal with Iran, before meeting the new leader of Syria Ahmed al-Sharaa. A short flight on Air Force One then whisked him over to Doha where he signed financial and arms deals worth billions of dollars with the Emir of Qatar.

President Donald Trump is in Qatar after he met with Syria’s interim president and inked deals in Saudi Arabia. Follow here for the latest live news updates.

The drastic response to the Port Sudan attacks has been underpinned by a belief that they were masterminded in Abu Dhabi. Sudanese and western diplomatic sources told MEE that, enraged by the Nyala airport strike - and by Turkey’s perceived involvement in it - the UAE had authorised and directed the assault on Port Sudan.