US-based experts warned on Thursday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was holding some Western nationals in jail to use them as “bargaining chips” against their countries in what they described as “hostage diplomacy.”
A 36-page report by the Washington DC-based think-tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said over 30 European and Americans spent time imprisoned in Turkey following a controversial military coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
At least nine of them, two US citizens, remained in custody “as of June 1, 2018,” noted the report, co-authored by FDD fellows Eric Edelman, a former US ambassador to Turkey, and Aykan Erdemir, a former opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy at the Turkish Parliament.
“The [Turkish] government uses the prisoners as pawns to extract concessions in bilateral relations with the US and EU countries,” they said.
Ankara’s jailing of foreigners on political grounds with accusations ranging from espionage and propaganda to membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Gülen movement has added to the deterioration of ties with its NATO allies.
“Not only did authorities begin to target Western human rights advocates, an attempt to intimidate Turkish dissidents who collaborate with foreign colleagues, but Turkey’s pro-government media also launched a slander campaign against Europeans and Americans, accusing them of supporting terrorism and conspiring coups to make them into targets for the mass crackdown,” FDD’s report said.
It cited the cases of two Americans, pastor Andrew Brunson and Serkan Gölge, a Turkish-American physicist who worked for NASA’s Mars program until the Turkish police arrested him in 2016 while on vacation in Turkey as notable examples of hostages.
The FDD reports stated that “Increasingly, another aspect of these mass arrests has emerged: Since last summer, American and European officials have on several occasions condemned Turkey’s ‘hostage diplomacy’ – efforts by the Turkish government to make political bargaining chips out of Western prisoners arrested in Turkey since the coup. Following the arbitrary detention of Western nationals in Turkey, they argue, the government uses the prisoners as pawns to extract concessions in bilateral relations with the US and EU countries.”
“As one Freedom House analyst observed, ‘Turkey’s new foreign policy is hostage-taking.’ Indeed, as President Erdoğan turned increasingly autocratic at home, Turkey’s international reputation and relations with its traditional transatlantic partners have also frayed,” reminded the FDD report.
Brunson’s continued detention for alleged membership in the PKK and Gülen movement has enraged the Trump administration and the US Congress. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged the pastor’s liberty as the Congress threatens sanctions on Erdoğan regime that could affect their military trade, including the sale of F-35 warplanes to Ankara.
The Turkish President Erdoğan himself implied Brunson’s freedom by exchanging him with US-based Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, who he holds responsible for mounting the controversial coup and forcefully demands from the US his extradition.
“‘Give us the pastor back,’ they say. You have one pastor as well. Give him [Gülen] to us,” Erdoğan said in September 2017. “Then, we will try him [Brunson] and give him to you.”
“The harshest denunciations of Ankara’s hostage diplomacy, however, have come from the United States Congress, where members have issued multiple calls for imposing sanctions against Turkish officials involved in the wrongful arrests of American citizens. The arrest of Brunson on dubious charges, in particular, has animated Washington, where Congress has held numerous panels and hearings on the pastor’s Kafkaesque case and the conditions of his confinement. Meanwhile, authorities have arrested at least three Turkish employees of US consular missions in Turkey, prompting a visa crisis between the NATO allies in late October 2017. While the crisis was ostensibly resolved by December the same year, all three employees remain in prison or under house arrest”, the report added.
Earlier this year, Czech media reported that Ankara had offered Prague to exchange two of its citizens imprisoned in Turkey with Salih Muslim, the former Co-leader of a US-allied Syrian Kurdish party who Czech authorities detained for days at the behest of the Erdoğan administration.
Germany’s public-funded DW exposed a similar scenario regarding the case of Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel who Erdoğan had on live TV vowed to keep in jail as long as he was president.
Yücel was released in February following a series of meetings between top German and Turkish officials, including both countries’ foreign and prime ministers.
Washington and various European countries have so far dealt with “Erdoğan’s hostage diplomacy” at the bilateral level, using discreet talks with Ankara to plead for the release of their nationals and employees, FDD recorded.
The report said “this hostage diplomacy is not only hurting Turkey’s global standing, but also propelling its transatlantic partners to consider sanctions against Ankara” and added that “Germany and the United States have issued several travel warnings to their citizens, advising against visiting Turkey. Business communities and investors across Europe fear Turkey’s repressive climate and lack of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Turkey’s relations with the Netherlands unraveled in March 2017, after a diplomatic row ahead of the Dutch elections. While the main reason for the breakdown was Erdoğan’s incitement of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands, the deportations and detentions of dozens of Dutch citizens in Turkey did not help.”
The report has continued to underlined that “The United States and various European Union countries have so far dealt with Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy at the bilateral level, using discreet talks with Ankara to plead for the release of their nationals and employees. The Turkish president has chosen to bargain with each country according to his calendar, using his hostages as leverage to gain concessions. The US and the EU need a coherent, transatlantic strategy to counter Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy, not only to ensure the release of Western nationals in prison, but also to prevent other incidents in the future.”
The post FDD report: Turkey’s jailing of Western nationals is ‘hostage diplomacy’ appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/fdd-experts-turkeys-jailing-of-western-nationals-hostage-diplomacy/
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