Why a New York Court Case Has Rattled Turkey’s President
They have cited the 2013 Turkish investigation in court papers filed in New York where nine men — including
a senior Turkish bank official — have been charged with conspiring to evade American sanctions on Iran.
A day earlier, Mr. Erdogan described the indictment as "a step against the Turkish Republic."
And in recent days, as tensions between the countries grew worse amid a diplomatic dispute over Turkey’s detention of a United States Embassy employee, Turkish officials justified their actions by equating them to the embargo charges in New York.
Mr. Caglayan and Mr. Aslan are not in custody of either the United States or Turkey; Mr. Zarrab has been
jailed in the United States since March 2016, after being arrested during a family trip to Disney World.
And the defendants charged in the United States are accused, in part, of returning to a version of the gas-for-gold
scheme — a course of action Turkish investigators say the men took after they had spoken with Mr. Erdogan.
In one of the conversations, on Sept. 19, 2013, Mr. Zarrab claimed
that he had personally spoken to Mr. Erdogan about the trade deficit, and had assured the leader he would help increase Turkish exports by $4 billion.
One question now is whether one or more of the defendants — two of whom are jailed in New York
and scheduled for trial on Nov. 27 — might still plead guilty and cooperate with the United States authorities in the hope of winning leniency in sentencing.
According to the recordings, Mr. Erdogan spoke with Messrs. Zarrab, Caglayan
and Aslan about the need to restore Turkish export figures to the record high of the previous year.