Trump Should Teach Erdogan a Lesson in Law, Not Corruption

The president offered to help Turkey’s strongman beat U.S. courts, John Bolton has revealed. It only helps Iran.

 
Donald Trump’s puzzling relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long perplexed policy watchers. Things have become much clearer after the release of The Room Where It Happened, the new book from former National Security Advisor John Bolton, which reveals new details about Trump, Erdogan, and Iran that should worry the public even more.

The most perplexing detail, less well-known to the public but frequently mentioned in Bolton’s book, is Trump’s soft spot for Halkbank — Turkey’s second-largest state bank, which federal prosecutors in October charged with helping Iran evade sanctions. Trump’s acquiescence in Erdogan’s tireless efforts to shield the Turkish bank and its accomplices from legal action remains sharply at odds with the U.S. president’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

The Halkbank saga goes back to Obama-era sanctions against Iran and the Turkish lender’s role — with Erdogan’s approval — in helping Tehran illicitly transfer tens of billions of dollars, as part of one of the biggest sanctions-evasion schemes in history. U.S. authorities arrested Reza Zarrab, the Iranian-Turkish ringleader of the conspiracy in March 2016, along with Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Halkbank’s deputy general manager, in March 2017, for their respective roles in the scheme.

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Πηγή: defenseone.com