Turkey will freeze the assets of two United States ministers as retaliation to Washington’s sanctions against Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Saturday.
“The latest step taken by the US in the incident of Pastor Brunson in İzmir was not suitable to a strategic partner. The US has displayed a serious disrespect with this step,” Erdoğan said in a speech at the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) congress for its women’s organization in Ankara on Sunday.
“We have had shown patience until yesterday evening. Today I am instructing my friends that we will freeze the assets of US secretaries of justice and interior in Turkey,” he added. “Those who think that they can make Turkey take a step back by resorting to threatening language and absurd sanctions show that they do not know the Turkish nation.”
The US had announced sanctions on Turkey’s justice and interior ministers on the grounds their responsibility for implementing serious human rights violations against imprisoned Pastor Andrew Brunson.
Under the current US sanctions, any property, or interest in property, belonging to Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu within US jurisdiction would be blocked. Americans would generally be prohibited from doing business with them. Turkey had said it would retaliate the sanctions in the same way.
Erdoğan also said that “Do not enter a swap deal with us by arresting the deputy general manager of Halkbank, who went to the US and came back six times.”
Mehmet Hakan Atilla, former deputy CEO of Turkish state lender Halkbank, has been sentenced to 32 months in prison in the US for violating the sanctions on Iran.
“Turkey cannot be an item of US domestic politics like it became in Europe. Repeating the faults that Europe did, will not earn America anything,” Erdoğan claimed. He said they could solve problems with the US by prioritizing their alliance based on mutual interests and strategic partnership.
“The channels of diplomacy are working very intensely. I think that we will leave behind a major chunk of differences between us soon,” he said, adding that they should sort out the issue rationally. Erdoğan urged that if these political and judicial disputes affect the economic dimensions, they will be harmful for both countries.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that he hoped Americans detained in Turkey would be released “in coming days”, according to a report by Reuters.
“I had a constructive conversation with my counterpart yesterday. I made clear that it is well past time that pastor Brunson be free and permitted to return to the United States and that the others being held by Turkey also similarly be freed as well,” Pompeo told reporters a day after a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in Singapore. “I am hopeful that in the coming days that we will see that occur,” added Pompeo.
Asked if the issue threatened Turkey’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Pompeo said that “Turkey is a NATO partner whom the United States has every intention of continuing to work cooperatively with.”
The US decision to impose sanctions came days after Turkey refused to free American Pastor Brunson, who was last week moved by a Turkish court from pretrial detention, in which he has been held since October 2016, to house arrest in İzmir but barred him from leaving the premises or the country.
Following the court ruling US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence threatened to impose “large sanctions” on Turkey if Brunson were not freed.
Turkish prosecutor accuses Brunson who runs a small church in İzmir, of activities on behalf of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as well as the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of orchestrating a failed coup in 2016, an accusation strongly denied by the movement.
The post Erdoğan: Turkey to freeze ‘assets of two US ministers’ as retailiation to sanctions appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/erdogan-turkey-to-freeze-assets-of-two-us-ministers-as-retailiation-to-sanctions/
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder