U.S. takes on Turkey

The decades-long alliance between the U.S. and Turkey has been an endangered species for more than a year now. Today it is on life support — a victim of a regime where the rule of law has lost all meaning.

In the past week alone a Turkish employee of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul was arrested and accused of ties to the exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, blamed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for an attempted coup back in July 2016. He was the second consulate employee to be detained and a third is being sought by Turkish authorities.

In the same week a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who holds dual Turkish-Finnish citizenship was sentenced to two years in prison for an article she wrote two years ago about the Kurds that the government deemed propaganda.

A statement by William Lewis, CEO of Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, defended the article by Ayla Albayrak and said, “This ruling against a professional and respected journalist is an affront to all who are committed to furthering a free and robust press.”

Happily Albayrak — unlike too many of her Turkish colleagues stuck in Turkish prisons — is safely back in New York. But the phony conviction could severely hamper her ability to do the kind of international travel critical to her reporting.

Meanwhile the U.S. Embassy in Turkey, in retaliation for the arrest of its employees, has suspended all non-immigrant visa services for Turkish citizens wishing to visit the U.S. Sadly that is likely to punish the wrong people.

But President Trump, instead of cozying up to this dictator as he did during Erdogan’s visit earlier this year, could certainly send a tougher message. That U.S. employees are not bargaining chips in some broader international dispute. That Gulen, now living in Pennsylvania, isn’t either. And that will remain the case until the rule of law is restored in Turkey.