Reacting to the joint statement in support of the jailed civil society leader Osman Kavala the US, German and eight other Western envoys issued, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened on Thursday to expel them, Euractiv reports.
The highly unusual joint statement the 10 ambassadors issued on Monday, which went viral on their Turkish social media accounts, stressed that Kavala’s continued detention cast a shadow over Turkey, calling for a just and speedy resolution to his case.
Being in jail without a conviction since 2017, Parisian-born philanthropist and activist Kavala became a symbol of what Erdoğan’s growing intolerance of dissent, facing a string of alternating charges linked to 2013 anti-government protests and a failed military coup in 2016.
After Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned on Tuesday the envoys over the statement calling for Kavala’s release, the enraged Erdoğan stressed that Turkey cannot have the luxury of hosting them.
Erdoğan also stressed that it’s out of the ambassadors’ boundaries to teach such a lesson to Turkey, prompting fears of a new wave of Turkish tensions with the West that made the Turkish lira extend its fall into record-low against the dollar within moments of Erdoğan’s comments.
The potential expulsion of US Ambassador David Satterfield would come during a planned rotation of the US’s chief envoy to Ankara and threatens to cast a shadow over next week’s G20 summit in Rome, where the Turkish president hopes to meet with President Biden he has chilly relations with unlike the personal friendship he enjoyed with former US president Trump, who protected Ankara from sanctions for years.
The diplomatic fallout of the West with Turkey escalated when FATF, the global financial misconduct watchdog, placed Turkey on the “grey list” of countries – along with Syria, South Sudan and Yemen-and under surveillance for failing to combat money laundering and terrorism financing,
Trying hard to fight off the designation, Erdoğan introduced new legislation allegedly aimed to fight terror networks, but critics underscore it mostly targets Turkish NGOs that promote pro-Kurdish causes and human rights.
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