mis à jour le Vendredi 10 août 2018 à 16h06
Andrew Brunson, an evangelical pastor from North Carolina, is being held on terrorism charges.
Credi tAgence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Amberin Zaman | Ms. Zaman is a Turkish journalist based in Washington
With Turkish-American relations souring, the focus should be on freeing imprisoned American citizens and the Turkish staff of the United States Embassy.
Turkey’s relations with the United States have been unremittingly rotten for some time. They took a sharp turn for the worse when last week the U.S. Treasury slapped Turkey’s interior and justice ministers with sanctions inspired by the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which have been used to target criminals and human rights abusers such as Slobodan Tesic, the Serbian arms dealer; Mukhtar Hamid Shah, an organ trafficker from Pakistan; and Yahya Jammeh, the former president of Gambia.
The sanctions freeze the assets of the targeted individuals in the United States and prohibit American citizens and companies from engaging in transactions with them.
The trigger for the sanctions on the Turkish ministers was Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina pastor imprisoned in Turkey since October 2016 on terrorism charges supposedly for trying to fragment the country, Christianize Kurds and help plan a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The lawyers for Mr. Brunson have pointed out that because he and his wife returned to Turkey after the July 2016 coup and sought permanent residency in the country, they could not have been involved in the coup. President Trump and several senators have vouched for Mr. Brunson’s innocence and described his imprisonment as Turkey’s using him as a political bargaining chip.
On July 26, President Trump threatened “large sanctions” if Turkey did not release the pastor immediately. Turkey’s battered lira fell further, losing 2.3 percent of its value against the dollar after Mr. Trump tweeted his threat. The Turkish lira has lost 27 percent of its value this year.
Mr. Trump was furious because he believed he had a deal. Reports suggest it hugely benefited Turkey. In exchange for the pastor’s freedom, Washington reportedly considered lowering a multibillion-dollar fine against the Turkish state-owned Halkbank for evading United States sanctions against Iran. It also offered to let a senior Turkish executive, convicted by a federal court in Manhattan for participating in the scheme, to serve out the rest of his sentence back home.
Mr. Trump threw in an extra sweetener by persuading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to extradite a Turkish woman accused of having links to Hamas. But when Mr. Erdogan came up with last-minute demands — reportedly that the investigation by American authorities against Halkbank be dropped — the deal fell through and Mr. Brunson was placed under house arrest. Turkey missed a great opportunity; the United States imposed the sanctions.
President Erdogan described the sanctions on his ministerial colleagues as a “Zionist Evangelist plot” and vowed to retaliate in kind by imposing sanctions on the American counterparts of the Turkish ministers.
Pro-government Turkish newspapers are baying for United States troops to be kicked out of Incirlik, a Turkish air base used in the fight against Islamic State militants and other critical missions, but the Turkish government has not moved in that direction yet.
The crisis between the two NATO allies is the worst since the United States imposed an arms embargo on Turkey over its 1974 invasion of Cyprus. But even if Mr. Brunson is allowed to leave, Turkish-American relations won’t improve significantly.
Turkey is holding several United States citizens, including Serkan Golge, a Turkish-American NASA scientist, who was visiting Turkey after the coup and was arrested after a disgruntled relative claimed he had links to coup plotters. Three Turkish nationals working for American consulates in Turkey are also under detention on a cocktail of specious terror charges.
Congress has lined up its own set of sanctions, which include freezing the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, as retaliation for the imprisonments and Turkey’s plans to acquire the Russian-made S-400 missile system, which the Pentagon sees as compromising NATO security.
The Turkish government’s supporters in the Trump administration argue for de-escalation because they see the relationship with Turkey as too valuable to forsake. They argue that punitive measures would drive Mr. Erdogan fully into the embrace of Russia, China and Iran. And Mr. Erdogan, who is hailed by a large number of Muslims as a fearless champion of the Palestinian cause, could cut Turkey’s ties to Israel. They are wrong.
Should Washington stick to its guns, it might just help nudge Mr. Erdogan back to the democratic path of reform. After all, Turkey has far more to lose from a rupture than the United States does. The Americans don’t have the kind of economic leverage the Europeans have over Turkey. But infuriated by Turkish recalcitrance, Congress now wants the Trump administration to block future funding for Turkey from global lenders like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — assistance it might need given its economic troubles.
As Mr. Erdogan continues to systematically hollow out Turkey’s democratic institutions, foreign investors continue to flee. As economic troubles mount, Mr. Erdogan’s sizable pool of supporters in the Turkish business community might rethink their loyalty. Unlike Iran, Turkey does not have oil to subsidize the follies of its leaders.
Despite its cooperation with Russia against the Syrian Kurds, Turkey is nervous about Russian expansionism in the Black Sea and South Caucasus. Turkey does not recognize the annexation of Crimea, champions the cause of ethnic Crimean Tatars and has closed its ports to traffic from Crimea in protest. Mr. Erdogan might talk tough, but Turkey needs NATO and he is aware of it.
Easing pressure on Turkey before all innocent American citizens and Turkish diplomatic staff are freed would reinforce Turkey’s claims that the Trump administration “only cares about Christians” and that it is raising a storm over Mr. Brunson to please Mr. Trump’s evangelical base. It would also encourage Mr. Erdogan to believe he can continue to behave badly and get away with it.
Paranoia about purported Western designs to weaken and fragment Turkey — notably through the establishment of an independent Kurdish state — has been embedded in the Turkish mind since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Allied powers at the end of World War I.
It is a measure of both Turkey’s insecurity and arrogance that it believes it is the object of such plans. Turkey’s once omnipotent generals, and now Mr. Erdogan, have manipulated those fears to justify the oppression of their own citizens and consolidate their grip.
Pressingly, the United States must ensure that Mr. Brunson, other American citizens and the Turkish staff of the United States Embassy who are in prison are freed immediately. The longer it holds out, the harder it will be to step back and salvage the relationship because the Turkish government will get trapped further by its own rhetoric about American plots. Mr. Erdogan’s near total control of the media means he can spin freeing Mr. Brunson and others as a victory.
Amberin Zaman, a former Turkey correspondent for The Economist, is a columnist for Al-Monitor.
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to 20 United States citizens imprisoned in Turkey. We have not been able to confirm the number of those imprisoned.