Donald Trump has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in Sunday’s referendum that gave him sweeping new powers.<\/p>\n
In a phone call, the US president also thanked Mr Erdogan for supporting America’s missile strike on a Syrian government airbase on 7 April.<\/p>\n
In the poll, 51.4% of Turkish voters backed the changes.<\/p>\n
Mr Erdogan rejected criticism from international monitors who said he had been favoured by an “unequal campaign”.<\/p>\n
“Know your place,” he told the observers.<\/p>\n
The narrow victory was ruled valid by Turkey’s electoral body, despite claims of irregularities by the opposition.<\/p>\n
In a separate development, Turkey extended the state of emergency for three months. The measure, introduced after a failed coup last July, was set to expire in two days.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Monday, the White House said President Trump discussed with his Turkish counterpart America’s “action in response to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons” on 4 April.<\/p>\n
It said the two leaders “agreed on the importance of holding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accountable”.<\/p>\n
They also discussed “the counter-ISIS [Islamic State campaign]”, the statement added.<\/p>\n
Relations between Washington and Ankara have recently been strained by several key issues.<\/p>\n
One of Turkey’s main grievances with the US is the policy started by the Obama administration of supporting Kurdish fighters in Syria who are fighting IS forces.<\/p>\n
Turkey views the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a terror group linked to Kurdish separatists waging an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.<\/p>\n
The two sides are also at loggerheads over Fethullah Gulen. Turkey accuses the Pennsylvania-based cleric of orchestrating the failed coup and wants him extradited.<\/p>\n
Officially Washington insists any decision on returning him to Turkey from the US remains a judicial rather than a political one.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in Sunday’s referendum that gave him sweeping new powers. In a phone call, the US president also thanked Mr Erdogan for supporting America’s missile strike on a Syrian government airbase on 7 April. In the poll, 51.4% of Turkish voters backed the changes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[264,6251,6224,6252],"class_list":["post-311696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-donald-trump","tag-erdogan-win","tag-turkey-referendum","tag-turkish-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}