Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump will hold highly-anticipated talks in Washington, DC on November 13 at a time of heightened tensions between the NATO allies.

Erdogan aides had previously indicated the Turkish president may cancel the visit amid disputes over the Syrian conflict and the U.S. House of Representatives recognizing the mass killing of Armenians a century ago as genocide.

However, officials on Wednesday said the visit would go ahead and that the two leaders had exchanged views on bilateral issues and regional developments during a phone call.

In the telephone conversation, "the two leaders reconfirmed that they will meet in Washington on Wednesday, November 13, on President Trump's invitation," the Turkish presidency said. 

Trump tweeted that he'd had a "very good call" with Erdogan and would "look forward" to hosting him. He said that during the phone call, they discussed the Syrian-Turkish border, "the eradication of terrorism, the ending of hostilities with the Kurds, and many other topics."

On the call, Erdogan also discussed the detention of the wife of the late ISIL group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed during a U.S. raid in Syria.

Erdogan and Trump are thought to have a strong bond, Reuters reported, despite anger in Congress over Turkey's Syria offensive and its purchase of Russian air defenses, and despite what Ankara sees as the U.S. president's own erratic pronouncements.

Those personal ties could prove crucial, given NATO member Turkey's purchase of Moscow's S-400 missile defense system, which under US law should trigger sanctions.

Turkey has already been suspended from the F-35 fighter jet program in which it was both joint producer and customer, and the offensive it launched against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria on October 9 set the stage for further US retaliation.

(With input from AFP, Reuters)