Turkey vows not to submit to US ‘impositions’ in visa row

ANKARA: Turkey will not submit to “impositions” from the US over an ongoing visa crisis and will reject any conditions it cannot meet, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.

A delegation from the US is visiting Turkey in an attempt to repair diplomatic ties between the NATO allies after both countries stopped issuing visas to each other’s citizens this month.

Washington first suspended visa services at its missions in Turkey, after Turkish authorities detained two Turkish nationals employed as US consular staff. The US delegation has asked Ankara for information and evidence regarding the detained staff, private broadcaster Haberturk reported.

“We will cooperate if their demands meet the rules of our Constitution but we will not succumb to impositions and we will reject any conditions that we cannot meet,” Cavusoglu told a news conference, when asked about the report of requests from the US delegation.

A translator at the consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested in May and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worker was detained in Istanbul two weeks ago. Both were detained on suspicion of links to last year’s failed coup, allegations the US has rejected.

Haberturk said the US delegation, which arrived in Turkey this week, laid out four conditions to solve the visa crisis, including that Turkey must provide information about its investigations into the detained workers, and evidence related to DEA worker Metin Topuz.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said last week Topuz had been in contact with a leading suspect in last year’s failed military coup. Turkish media reported similar accusations against the translator in May.

US-Turkish tensions have risen in recent months over US’ military support for Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, considered by Ankara to be an extension of the banned PKK which has waged an insurgency for three decades in southeast Turkey.

Turkey has also pressed, so far in vain, for the US to extradite Fethullah Gulen, viewed in Ankara as the mastermind behind the failed coup in which more than 240 people were killed.

Friction with the US has also arisen from the indictment last month by a US court of Turkey’s former Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan on charges of conspiring to violate US sanctions on Iran.

Sinan Ulgen, an analyst and former Turkish diplomat, said those underlying disputes had created a crisis of confidence which made this latest fall-out particularly bitter.