BRUSSELS: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets EU leaders Monday but they will find it hard to bridge gaps on the migrant crisis and the Syrian war that has produced so many of the refugees they must both deal with, analysts say.
Russian air strikes in Syria have upped the ante in a conflict which has destabilised a region in which Ankara plays a pivotal role, with Turkey taking around two million refugees from Syria.
Erdogan faces crunch elections on November 1 and analysts say he will want some solid signs of progress to take home without giving ground in his implacable campaign against Kurdish rebels.
For the European Union, the focus will be on getting Turkey to do more to halt the flow of migrants making the dangerous crossing to Greece, with more than 500,000 having made it to Europe's shores this year.
Against this complex backdrop, analysts say Erdogan and his hosts, EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, will be looking to strike a delicate balance between two sides who have little option but to work together.
"In this massive exodus, driven by the Syrian conflict and now added to by the Russian military intervention which makes people feel things can only get worse, Turkey and the EU are in the same boat," said Marc Pierini of the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels.
"It is destabilising for them and it is destabilising for the EU," Pierini told AFP.
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