{"id":12608,"date":"2018-08-24T08:24:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12608"},"modified":"2018-08-24T08:24:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:46","slug":"netanyahu-in-baltics-in-search-of-european-allies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12608","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu in Baltics in search of European allies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nANKARA: The spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed what he said was the US disregard for Turkey\u2019s legal process, adding Washington had made arbitrary comments and demands in the case of a detained pastor.
In a statement to Reuters, Ibrahim Kalin called on the US to respect Turkey\u2019s judicial independence, one of Ankara\u2019s most pointed responses yet to criticism over its detention of evangelical Christian pastor Andrew Brunson.
\u201cThere is rule of law in Turkey and the Andrew Brunson case is a legal issue. There is an ongoing legal process related to this individual,\u201d Kalin said.
\u201cIt goes without saying that we find unacceptable the disregard of the legal process by the United States, which has been making certain demands.\u201d
His comments came after President Donald Trump\u2019s National Security Adviser John Bolton earlier said that Turkey made a \u201cbig mistake\u201d in not releasing Brunson.
Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for two decades, has been detained for 21 months on terrorism charges, which he denies, and is now under house arrest.
Trump, who counts evangelical Christians among his core supporters, has become a vocal champion of the pastor\u2019s case, making him an unwitting flashpoint in the tension between two NATO allies. \u201cEvery day that goes by that mistake continues, this crisis could be over instantly if they did the right thing as a NATO ally, part of the West, and release (him) … without condition,\u201d Bolton said. Kalin, dismissed those statement as \u201carbitrary\u201d comments and demands. He also hit back against the US over an investigation into state-owned lender Halkbank for potential Iran-sanctions busting. Turkey wants the US Treasury to halt the investigation. Halkbank has said all of its transactions were legal. A US court this year sentenced one of its executives to 32 months in prison for involvement in a scheme to avoid Iran sanctions. \"\"
\u201cIt is unacceptable that certain baseless and false allegations are made against Halkbank to weaken this public bank,\u201d Kalin said.
\u201cIt seems that the purpose of those steps is to discredit respectable institutions and persons, and to punish them unjustly rather than discover the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Big mistake\u2019<\/strong>
Economists said Turkey had still to convince investors it was ready to take measures needed to shore up its economy.
\u201cThe problems of Turkey are not fixed,\u201d said Cristian Maggio, head of emerging markets strategy at TD Securities. \u201cThere is not one single structural solution or reform that has been advanced or detailed by the local authorities.\u201d
Maggio added that lira volatility had increased due to thin trading volumes as Turkish markets are closed all week for Eid Al-Adha.
Kalin said that comments by Bolton showed the US was targeting Turkey\u2019s economy.
Bolton was also skeptical about $15 billion of investment support from Qatar, saying it was \u201cutterly insufficient to have an impact on Turkey\u2019s economy.\u201d
\u201c(Bolton\u2019s) statement is proof that the Trump administration is targeting a NATO ally as part of an economic war,\u201d Kalin said.
\u201cThe Trump administration has … established that it intends to use trade, tariffs and sanctions to start a global trade war.\u201d
Until Kalin\u2019s statement, Turkish officials had been silent about comments on Turkey this week by Trump and Bolton.
Trump told Reuters on Monday he would make no concessions to Ankara in return for Brunson\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA: The spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed what he said was the US disregard for Turkey\u2019s legal process, adding Washington had made arbitrary comments and demands in the case of a detained pastor.In a statement to Reuters, Ibrahim Kalin called on the US to respect Turkey\u2019s judicial independence, one of Ankara\u2019s most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}