Turkey seeks life sentence against US Consulate employee
A Turkish national and liaison officer for the DEA at the US Consulate in Istanbul has been indicted for espionage.
As Turkey continues to joust with the United States over a proposed safe zone in northern Syria and its attendant effects on the Kurds, the merits of appeasing Ankara have been called into question yet again with Turkish prosecutors seeking a life sentence for a US Consulate employee.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that US Consulate employee Metin Topuz, jailed since October 2017 on charges of espionage and attempts to overthrow Turkey’s government, was accused in a 78-page indictment seen by the news service of “intense contact” with Turkish police officers who led a massive corruption investigation targeting Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s then prime minister, who was elected president a year later.
Topuz, a Turkish national and veteran liaison officer for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) at the US Consulate in Istanbul, apparently told authorities that he had interacted with a number of police officers with alleged ties to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based cleric who is accused of orchestrating a failed coup against Erdogan in July 2016. Prosecutors said this and telephone calls and text messages to the suspects, among other things, amounted to proof of Topuz’s guilt.
US officials speaking on condition of anonymity dismissed the claims, saying Topuz would have spoken to scores of police officers of all ideological hues during his decadeslong career working for the DEA.
