US President Barack Obama will visit Turkey “in a month or so,” his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Ankara Saturday. Clinton was speaking at a joint press conference with Turkey's Foreign Minister Ali Babacan after talks with the country's leaders aimed at repairing relations damaged over the Iraq war. “President Obama will be visiting Turkey within the next month or so,” she said. “The exact date will be announced shortly. We are just at the beginning of planning this decision reached yesterday.” Questioned by a journalist, Clinton said she could not confirm when or where would be the occasion for Obama's promised address in the capital of a major Muslim nation. Clinton met Saturday with leaders of Turkey, a strategic ally that is key to resolving several US problems including moving the US military out of Iraq, blocking Iran's nuclear ambitions and turning around the war in Afghanistan. Clinton talked with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for nearly two hours at his residence before visiting the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's national founder. There, she recalled being in Ankara during her husband's presidency and said she had returned to help President Barack Obama promote “the work the US and Turkey must do to forge peace, prosperity and progress.” “It is an honor to visit once again this extraordinary tribute and memorial to the founder of this great country and to show the friendship of the United States and the Turkish people,” she told journalists after visiting the mausoleum. “The last time I was here, my husband was president. This time, I come as secretary of state, on behalf of our new president, President Obama, to emphasize the work the US and Turkey must do together on behalf of peace, prosperity and progress.” A senior US official earlier said the Obama administration “has a chance to rebuild on a better footing after the most acute problems accumulated in the Bush administration have finally been taken off” the table. In 2003 Turkey refused to open a northern front against Iraq from its territory for the US, provoking a chill in relations between Ankara and Washington. Relations improved in 2007 when the US began to share intelligence information on PKK movements in northern Iraq.
