​Visa ban stand-off: Further escalation unlikely

TURKEY - In Brief 10 Oct 2017 by Atilla Yesilada

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Finally, I’m able to write a few intelligent lines about the visa ban stand-off between US and Turkey. The good news is that neither side seems to have an incentive to ratchet up the conflict. The bad news is that a climb-down is not likely in the short-term, barring a break-through in an impending phone chat between Trump and Erdogan. I must warn my audience that Tuesday’s rebound in TL could prove fleeting considering the context surrounding the currency market. I invite readers to start by reading my brief primer published yesterday, linked here for their convenience. To add, despite many arguments to the contrary, I don’t find sufficient evidence that this conflict has much to do with the accretion of other disagreements between US and Turkey, e.g. the S-400 purchase, Reza Zarrab case, Erdogan’s bodyguards beating up protestors, etc. The State Department appears genuinely concerned that unless Turkey is given a credible warning, arrests of consular employees would go on and might even reach Americans residing in Turkey. As evidence, just like I reported yesterday a second Turkish-national consular employee is taking refuge in the Istanbul mission to avoid a bench warrant, while his son and wife are under arrest on charges of belonging to the Gulenist terror organization. The “suspect zero” of this case, Mr. Metin Topuz is cooperating voluntarily with the authorities, since he claims he has only carried out the legitimate tasks assigned to him by his supervisor, namely to affect coordination with Turkish judiciary and law enforcement officials (meaning he has made contact with countless Gulenist suspects), thus further arrest orders in this investigation are very li...