US SANCTIONS TWO TURKISH MINISTERS FOR JAILED PASTOR
▶ Justice and interior ministers targeted by US Treasury, as Ankara pledges swift response
Washington has sanctioned two Turkish ministers involved in the detention of US pastor Andrew Brunson in one of the biggest recent crises between the two Nato allies.
Tensions has soared over Turkey’s detention on terror charges of the American pastor, who was imprisoned in October 2016 and moved to house arrest last week.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control accused Turkey’s Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gul and Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu “leading roles in the organisations responsible for the arrest and detention of Pastor Brunson”.
The designation of the two came a week after US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence threatened Ankara with sanctions if Mr Brunson were not released.
He is accused of acting on behalf of a movement led by preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says was behind the 2016 attempted coup. Mr Gulen, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is now living in exile in the US.
Mr Brunson is also charged with links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Ankara regards both groups as terrorists.
Turkey was on Thursday drawing up retaliatory measures to the US sanctions.
The two Turkish officials were sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act and in accordance with an executive order “blocking the property of persons involved in serious human rights abuse or corruption”.
“Pastor Brunson’s unjust detention and continued prosecution by Turkish officials is simply unacceptable,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Mr Pence weighed in on Twitter, saying the “harsh economic sanctions on Turkey would continue until President Erdogan and the Turkish government release Pastor Brunson and return this innocent man of faith to the US”.
His words were immediately echoed by President Donald
The prospect of the country with the largest army in Nato imposing sanctions on the alliance’s second largest army may once have been outlandish. But the crisis between the United States and Turkey has been brewing for years, endangering an alliance that survived the trials of the Cold War.
The origins of the dispute between Ankara and Washington go farther back than the detention of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who has been in prison in Izmir for nearly two years over allegations of spying for Kurdish separatists and the Fethullah Gulen network, the group accused of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
The more immediate causes lie in Syria.
Turkish officials argued early in the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad that the US should impose a no-fly zone to ground the Syrian government’s planes and halt the killing of civilians.
But their push fell on deaf ears in Washington, which saw few partners on the ground that it was willing to work with to overthrow Mr Al Assad, and it had little appetite for being embroiled in another Middle Eastern war.
When the US did intervene in Syria against ISIS, it chose as its partner the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The Kurdish paramilitary force has close links with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group that fought a decades-long insurgency against Turkey. Ankara believed the YPG would turn the territory it conquered from ISIS into an autonomous zone on its southern border.
Bristling at Washington’s alliance with what it saw as a terrorist group and a threat, Turkey turned to Russia, Mr Al Assad’s primary backer and foe of the US, to try and broker a settlement in Syria that would exclude the Kurdish paramilitaries Turkey would go on to fight militarily.
Along with Moscow and Iran, the trio would largely shut out the US as they sought to broker talks between the Syrian government and the many opposition groups fighting it.
Those differences placed the Nato allies on divergent paths in the struggle that was playing out in Syria. As the US argued it needed to curtail Iranian influence, and would go on to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions, Turkey said it did not need to abide by them. After difficulties purchasing Patriot anti-missile batteries from the US, Ankara declared its intention to buy the Russian S-400 system, designed to down the F-35 fighter jets that Turkey was helping its allies build.
Although there was brief rapprochement after the election of Donald Trump, the easy rapport he enjoyed with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would not be enough to heal the divide between the two nations.
Mr Erdogan’s bodyguards beat protesters in May 2017 when he visited the US, prompting calls to expel the Turkish ambassador. Turkey’s arrest of US consulate staff in Istanbul on suspicions of coup links prompted tit-for-tat halts in visa applications, and a public trial involving a Turkish-Iranian gold trader in which the state-owned Halkbank was accused of helping Tehran circumvent sanctions added to the bad blood.
In addition, Mr Gulen, the alleged mastermind of the coup, remains in Pennsylvania. The American response to the coup as it was unfolding, with then Secretary of State John Kerry calling for “stability, peace, continuity” within Turkey, angered many Turks.
Last month, observers expected Turkey to release Mr Brunson after a positive interaction between Mr Trump and Mr Erdogan at the Nato summit in Brussels. But in a mid-July hearing, a court in Izmir ordered his release from prison into house arrest, prompting a threat of sanctions by Mr Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Few in Turkey appeared to take the threat seriously, particularly after Washington backed down from fiery rhetoric against North Korea and Iran. The US had refrained from condemning Turkey’s human rights record since the coup, including the arrest of dozens of journalists, and many civil society members and human rights campaigners.
So they were taken by surprise by the announcement of sanctions, measures commonly reserved for foes like Iranian Revolutionary Guard officials or Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
Selim Sazak, an analyst on Turkish politics and adjunct fellow at The Century Foundation, said Moscow was the winner as the allies squabbled. He pointed out that Turkey relies on Russia for gas shipments as well as its influence in seeking a resolution in Syria.
“You need to think about the arc of how we came here,” he said. “On what did they bet the house? Presumably Russian support. Which makes sense because they rely so much on Moscow now.”
Mr Erdogan and Mr Trump have yet to weigh in since the imposition of the sanctions.
Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, Mr Erdogan’s son-inlaw, said their issues ought to be resolved through “diplomacy and constructive efforts appropriate for two countries and allies with a strong historical background”.
Nevertheless, one official from the nationalist Iyi party suggested that perhaps the Trump towers in Istanbul ought to be seized. And the headline in Yenicag, a newspaper, captured the mood by declaring: “The latest treachery from the USA.”