Turkey: arrest warrant for US consulate employee

Turkish authorities have issued an arrest warrant for another US consulate employee in Istanbul, Turkey. The man's son and wife, according to the broadcaster "CNN Turk", are currently under interrogation. Undersecretary of the US Embassy in Ankara, Philip Kosnett, was summoned today by the Turkish Foreign Ministry following Washington's decision to stop providing visa services in the country. This was reported by sources in the newspaper “Hurriyet”, recalling that Ankara has already suspended US citizens' visa applications for Turkey. Today's developments are part of the ongoing dispute between the two countries following the arrest of another US consulate employee in Turkey. The man, arrested on 4 October, was accused of alleged affiliation with the Gulenist Organization (Feto, headed by the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen and held responsible for the failed coup of 15 July 2016). The US government, whose diplomatic relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey are increasingly strained, "deems the accusation unfounded". The US embassy in Turkey said it was "deeply irritated" by the arrest and condemned the leak of news it accuses, according to the newspaper "Wall Street Journal", to "sources of the Erdogan government". In particular, the employee is accountable to Turkish justice for having ties to a former prosecutor and four former Turkish police chiefs who in 2013 conducted an investigation into corruption involving allies of President Erdogan. According to the Turkish government, Feto would have tried to make the investigation public, an accusation, the "Wall Street Journal" specifies, which Gulen has always rejected. Negotiations for the extradition of Gulen, who has lived in the state of Pennsylvania since 1999, are at a standstill after the failed exchange attempt made last September. Erdogan had said he was willing to release an American cleric, Andrew Brunson, in prison for almost a year for terrorist activities, espionage in affiliation with Feto.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a press conference scheduled this morning at Istanbul's Ataturk airport, from which he left for a mini-tour that will take him to Ukraine and Serbia. Cumhuriyet reports it. The decision could be linked to the need to define a strategy to deal with this new diplomatic crisis, which already in the early hours of the morning had heavy repercussions on the Turkish lira and the Istanbul Stock Exchange.