Limited visa services will resume between the United States and Turkey after they were halted last month following the arrest of a U.S. consulate employee in Istanbul.
The U.S. Embassy in Ankara issued a statement on Monday saying it has received “high-level assurances" from Turkey that no other employees are under investigation, nor are any in danger of being detained or arrested “for performing official duties,” so therefore limited visa services in the country would resume.
The Turkish Embassy in Washington DC released a similarly worded statement announcing it would resume processing visa applications of U.S. citizens “on a limited basis.” The thaw in the standoff is seen as a positive development in what has been described as a “crisis point” between the two countries.
Since a July 2016 coup attempt, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political allies have authorized the arrests and firings of thousands of government workers and academia for allegedly cooperating with the coup plotters or insurgent groups in the country. Erdogan has accused U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen or orchestrating the coup and is in a dispute with the U.S. over its effort to have Gulen extradited to Turkey.
Metin Topuz, a Turkish staff member working for the U.S. consulate, was arrested in October for allegedly having ties to Gulen. It followed the arrest in May of a translator working at another U.S. consulate in the country, as well as the detention of a third individual working for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Istanbul.
The State Department questions the validity of any of the charges.
“We continue to have serious concerns about the existing cases against arrested local employees of our Mission in Turkey,” the Department stated.
The Turkish Embassy later released a statement claiming the person in question is the subject of investigation due to “very serious charges” against him and pushed back against security concerns cited by the U.S. mission.
Soner Cagaptay, the Director of the Turkish Research Project at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he believes the driver of the arrests of U.S. consulate employees is the accumulation of power by Turkish President Erdogan following the failed coup in July of 2016.
“The coup last year eliminated the gradualist Erdogan and replaced him with an absolutist Erdogan in terms of power consolidation,” says Cagaptay, speaking with the Cipher Brief last month.
“It’s the reverse of innocent until proven guilty: you can be detained and held indefinitely until somebody can prove your innocence,” says James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in regards to Erdogan’s heavy-handed approach to investigating the Gulen network.
Both the U.S. and Turkey have pledged to continue working with one another to resolve the cases.
Verdi Tzou is a national security web editor at The Cipher Brief.
