ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey regrets the vetoing by the United States on Monday of a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for the U.S. declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to be withdrawn, the Turkish foreign ministry said.  The United States was further isolated over President Donald Trump’s decision when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn despite the other 14 members voting in favor of it. “The United States being left alone in the vote is a concrete sign of the illegality of its decision on Jerusalem,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

Turkey has accused the United Arab Emirates of spreading divisive propaganda after its foreign minister retweeted a post denouncing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "ancestors" for their treatment of Arabs during the Ottoman Empire. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE foreign minister, had shared on Twitter a post that accused Fahreddin Pasha - an Ottoman governor of Medina from 1916-1919 - of committing crimes against the local population, including stealing their property. "These are Erdogan's ancestors and their past with the Arabs," it said.

Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül has said he will tell his U.S. counterpart Jeff Sessions that the New York trial of former Halkbank deputy general manager Hakan Atilla, charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, is “not legal and should be ended.” Gül told private broadcaster 24 TV on the morning of Dec. 19 that it would be “impossible to accept a verdict contrary to Turkey’s interests” in the case, which has strained ties between the NATO allies. Atilla, 47, was arrested earlier this year in the United States for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. He is now the sole man on the dock accused of violating sanctions on Iran, bribery and money laundering, after Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, 34, pleaded guilty to the charges and is now a state’s witness.

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey on Dec. 19 announced that the earliest date for visa appointments regarding non-immigrant applicants in its diplomatic missions in the country is January 2019, following a diplomatic spat that prompted the two NATO allies to mutually suspend granting visas. “In spite of long wait times, the U.S. Mission to Turkey continues to process non-immigrant visas. Appointments are available for January 2019, and applicants can as always choose to apply outside of Turkey,” the embassy stated on its Twitter account. “#USVisa appointments are still limited, but we are prioritizing F, J, M, and petition-based work categories as well as applicants with medical and business travel,” it added.