Trump Administration Tests Turkish President Erdoğan's Resolve on Prisoner Crisis

Until recently, nobody in the upper echelons of the western powers would ever imagine that two NATO allies, Turkey and the U.S.A., whose common history dates back to 1940's, would face a situation many observers describe as a prisoner swap, openly intending to bypass the rule of law. Such methods were common between arch enemies during the Cold War, but this? Yet, the new age offers new perspectives, and what takes place is a spectacular part of them.

In a nutshell, the impasse is caused by a number of U.S. citizens held captive in Turkey, many seen as targeted by bogus charges on terrorist activity; but it is about an Evangelist pastor, Andrew Brunson, who stirred emotions in the U.S. capital, and among the arch-conservative across the country. Then the stories emerged that presidents, Trump and Erdoğan, had struck a swap deal: In exchange for the pastor, the American side would release and deport a Turkish banker, who was sentenced to prison in a huge federal case, for breaching the Iranian embargo, implicating the close circles to Turkish government. But the deal got struck, as summarized in an article by Ishaan Taroor, in Washington Post.

Turkish government dragging its feet to release Brunson and some others who were part of staff in the American Embassy, brought the relations to the edge of abyss. The arms wrestling went as far as Trump issuing punitive measures to two key ministers of Erdoğan, and Turkish economy, already ailing, is gathering dark clouds, as pointed out by observers.

Erdoğan's defiance to go along with Trump's demands may have to do with his plans to lay the entire blame on the West, seeing the Brunson case as a pretext. He hopes that even the opposition gathers around him in anti-Americanism, as the analysts suggest, but nothing changes the fact that Turkey drifts away from its alliances and obligations.

Turkish-American relations, for long a backbone of NATO at the eastern flank, is in a deep crisis; at a watershed moment.