WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Turkish president's visit to the White House is seen as a major sign of improved relations between NATO allies after five years of acrimony over the Iraq war and U.S. policy on Turkey's fight against Kurdish rebels.

President Abdullah Gul 's meeting with President Bush follows a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan two months ago that resulted in a commitment by Bush to share intelligence on Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, rebels and not to object to Turkish airstrikes against the Kurdish guerrillas' installations in northern Iraq.

The two sides have even established a coordination center in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information. The first Turkish airstrike was Dec. 16 and used intelligence shared by Washington. Two days later, a small Turkish ground force invaded Iraqi Kurdistan to flush out Turkish Kurds sheltering there. Washington tacitly approved.

The PKK has been fighting for two decades to win a Kurdish homeland in Eastern Turkey.

Speaking about Turkish-U.S. relations with Turkish reporters last month, Gul said: "Things are going well at the moment. Intelligence is being shared. Now there is a cooperation befitting our alliance. Both of us are satisfied. This is how it should be. We could have come to this point earlier."

In the months leading to Erdogan's Nov. 5 White House appearance, however, U.S.-Turkish relations were at their lowest point in many years.

In 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq war, the Turkish parliament rejected U.S. requests to send troops into Iraq through Turkish territory. And a poll last summer showed just 9 percent of Turks saw the U.S. favorably.

Despite pleas from the Bush administration and personal appeals from Gul, then foreign minister, and other prominent Turks, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a nonbinding resolution last year that described as genocide the World War I-era deaths of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey reacted by withdrawing its ambassador from Washington.

Despite the improved situation since the Erdogan-Bush meeting, the situation remains touchy.

"Certainly there is far greater satisfaction in Turkey than there was as late as three months ago," John Sitilides, chairman of the Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Monday. "It's all related to the PKK. Now the United States is seen not as an entity that is holding the Turkish military back but is working with Turkey."

Still, Sitilides said, Turkey could "respond recklessly" to perceived U.S. mistreatment with grievous results. "There are 150,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq whose well-being would be jeopardized if Turkey decided on an action such as closing off access to the flow of war supplies."

Gul is having breakfast on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and is meeting Bush for talks and lunch. His schedule released in Ankara said he also will meet with Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday before flying to New York to meet at the United Nations with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

While in the United States, the Turkish president is to meet with representatives of the Meskhetian Turks. A minority group ousted from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the Meskhetians were bounced around to other Soviet republics until settling in Krasnodar Krai, a territory of Southern Russia.

The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program undertook what it calls one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in 2005-2006 to bring as many as 18,000 Meskhetians to about two dozen cities in the United States.

By William C. Mann