Turkish folk musician Selda Bağcan has been invited to Burning Man 2018, which has been held in the deserts of the U.S. state of Nevada for 31 years, hosting tens of thousands of visitors from around the world. Bağcan, who turned 69 years old last weekend, has reportedly told close friends of her invitation to next year’s Burning Man.
ADAM KLASFELD - courthousenews.com - MANHATTAN (CN) — The major players behind the 2008 global financial crisis may be free, but a Turkish bank manager’s prosecution for facilitating billions in illicit trades with Iran proves that the financial sector isn’t “too big to jail,” a U.S. prosecutor said on Tuesday. Facing the possibility of decades behind bars, Turkish national Mehmet Hakan Atilla has vigorously maintained his innocence throughout two days of cross-examination about his work at Turkey’s state-run Halkbank, the nation’s sixth largest bank. Directly after leaving the witness stand, Atilla jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire of a prosecutor’s heated summation. Defense attorneys have depicted Atilla as one of 13 managers who improbably found himself at the center of a geopolitical drama.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday the United States has isolated itself by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and accused it of threatening countries that might vote against it on the matter at an emergency U.N. General Assembly session.
Former deputy CEO of Turkish public bank Halkbank Mehmet Hakan Atilla completed his three-day testimony on Tuesday. He is facing a trial in which he is being accused of breaching US sanctions against Iran. Atilla became the only defendant in the case, after Reza Zarrab, who was the prime defendant, pleaded guilty and testified as a witness against the former banker, accusing him of the related crimes. “I did not conspire with anyone in any part of my life on that [evading sanctions],” Atilla responded to a question about whether or not he ever collaborated with Zarrab or anyone, on Friday during the first day of questioning by his lawyer.
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of a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for the U.S. declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to be withdrawn, the Turkish foreign ministry said.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over President Donald Trump’s decision when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn despite the other 14 members voting in favor of it.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.
"Ahad, it is not like that. I am telling you. Here, when you come around and say 'OK, yes, I did this s***,' look, this leaves you in peace. Once you confessed, they do not mess up with you." This was the exact sentence and an apparent confession of a plea bargain between the U.S. judiciary and Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who is now a witness in a trial held in New York on now-lifted U.S. sanctions against Iran. Just like Turkey has charged from the beginning, it was revealed late Monday with the transcript of Zarrab's jailhouse call with his uncle, who goes by the name "Ahad," that the businessman has been involved in a clear bargain with U.S. authorities.
On Tuesday evening, U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. H. R. McMaster spoke at Policy Exchange in Washington, recalled that "radical Islamist ideology is a grave threat to all civilized people" and singled out Turkey and Qatar as its main supporters today. The allegation sparked an outrage on Turkish Twitter and among senior officials in the Turkish capital of Ankara. To be clear, Mr. McMaster's remarks had nothing to do with "radical Islamist ideology" at all. Here's what makes the United States unhappy right now: First, the Astana process, which Turkey launched in cooperation with Russia and Iran, has rendered the U.S.-backed Geneva talks obsolete. At the same time, Turkey decided to purchase the S-400 air defense system from Russia instead of buying Patriot missiles from the United States. Finally, the Turks have been critical of Washington's plans to form a united front against Iran in the Middle East – featuring Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others.
Fetullah Gulen, the U.S.-based leader of the terrorist organization behind last year’s defeated coup, pays at least half a million dollars a month for lobbying activities in Washington, according the partner-lawyer of an international law firm. “Gulen has spent a vast amount of money on donations to officials. He spends anywhere from half a million to a million dollars a month just on lobbying in Washington,” said Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer in Amsterdam & Partners LLP, a law firm with offices in London and Washington DC. Amsterdam & Partners LLP was retained by Turkey to pursue a global investigation into the suspicious activities of Gulen, the mastermind of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
By Sibel Ugurlu, ANKARA - AA- Turkey-based FBI agent was summoned to General Directorate of Security in Ankara, a security official said on Wednesday. The FBI agent was summoned after Huseyin Korkmaz, a fugitive and former Turkish police supervisor, testified in a U.S. case against Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla. Korkmaz was arrested for his links to Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and released in February 2016. He fled to the U.S. in August with the documents related to FETO's judicial coup attempt of Dec. 17-25, 2013 in his possession.
By Michael Hernandez - WASHINGTON -AA - The U.S. said Wednesday it is "committed to its strategic partnership with Turkey to bring stability to the region and defeat terrorism in all its forms" amid a row sparked by comments from a senior Trump administration official. "We appreciate Turkey’s efforts to increase its border security, stem the flow of foreign fighters through its territory and fight on the ground to clear ISIS from key towns in Syria," a National Security Council spokesman told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Daesh.
A panel of experts in Washington held discussions Tuesday on a political solution to Syria’s ongoing civil war. Hosted by Washington-based think tank SETA DC, the discussion was titled “The Geneva Process: Toward a Political Solution in Syria”. Mona Yacoubian, a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Andrew Tabler, Martin J. Gross Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hassan Hassan, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and Kadir Ustun, executive director at SETA DC, took part in the panel. The discussion was moderated by Kilic Kanat, a research director at SETA DC. Participants agreed that actual developments in the field in Syria as well as peace talks in Astana and Geneva would directly affect a political process in the country.
