Tabnak – The diplomatic spat between Ankara and Washington has so far resulted in the stop of issuing visa on both sides, is becoming increasingly complicated. After the Turkish president brought under question the credibility of US the US ambassador in Ankara, now the Turkish police has targeted a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Ankara did not recognize outgoing John Bass as the US ambassador in the Anatolian country and would boycott all official meetings with him.
"The ambassador is currently paying farewell visits but neither our ministers, nor the parliament speaker, nor myself have accepted these farewell visits because we do not see him as the representative of the US in Turkey,” said the Turkish president in a joint press conference with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, on Tuesday.
On the other hand, American daily Wall Street Journal (WSJ) says Turkey has sentenced one of its reporters to two years in prison on charges of engaging in terrorist propaganda.
The newspaper said on Tuesday that Ayla Albayrak, a Finnish-Turkish citizen, was convicted of terrorist propaganda for writing an article about a conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government in the country’s southeastern areas in 2015. Albayrak plans to appeal against her conviction, the WSJ said. The reporter argued that the article accurately reflected the status of the conflict.
In the meantime, Erdogan has denounced as "upsetting” Washington’s decision to suspend non-immigrant visa services for Turkish nationals at US diplomatic facilities in Turkey.
"The Embassy’s decision to suspend all non-immigrant visa applications is upsetting,” Erdogan said in a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Porochenko, in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev on Monday.
It should be noted that in addition to the US, Turkey has also been involved in diplomatic brawls with some European countries, mainly over Ankara’s human rights records. The EU is now considering suspension of the process of Turkey’s accession to the bloc.
However, the US-Turkey dispute erupted last week when Turkey arrested a Turkish employee of the American consulate on suspicion of links to the group blamed for last year’s failed coup. In response, the United States stopped issuing visitor visas from its missions in Turkey, prompting Turkish missions to hit back with a tit-for-tat step of their own.
According to the Guardian, The row between Turkey and the US has spilled out of the diplomatic sphere into the sporting world after American WNBA players Emma Cannon and Brionna Jones were denied visas for entry into Turkey with their Russian team.
As another part of the story, Erdogan has slammed American officials for rejecting his requests to hand over Fethullah Gulen, accused of being the mastermind of the mid-July 2016 botched putsch, during which almost 250 people were killed and nearly 2,200 others wounded. Gulen has already denied the charges.
