BELGRADE/ANKARA: Turkey will boycott meetings with the US ambassador to Ankara as it no longer recognizes the envoy as the US representative in the country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday, stepping up a diplomatic row.
“We have not agreed and are not agreeing to this ambassador making farewell visits with ministers, the Parliament speaker and myself,” Erdogan said of US Ambassador John Bass, who is shortly to leave Turkey after being nominated the US envoy to Afghanistan.
“We do not see him as the representative of the US in Turkey,” he said at a news conference with President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade.
It is traditional for outgoing envoys in Turkey to make valedictory visits to bid farewell to top officials before leaving their posts.
Although Bass is expected to leave Turkey in the coming days, it is unprecedented in the history of Turkish-US relations for Ankara to say it no longer recognizes Washington’s ambassador.
The dispute erupted last week when Turkey arrested a Turkish employee of the American consulate on suspicion of links to the group blamed for last year’s failed coup. In response, the US stopped issuing non-immigrant visas from its missions in Turkey, prompting Turkish missions in the US to hit back with a tit-for-tat step of their own.
Erdogan said the arrest, based on evidence found by the police, shows “something is going on at the Istanbul consulate.”
“The US should evaluate one thing: How did those agents leak into the consulate?” Erdogan asked.
“If they did not (put them there), then who put them there? No state would allow such agents to pose such a threat.”
The US Embassy has dismissed the allegations against the consulate staffer as “baseless.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called on the US to move quickly to end the dispute.
The US decision to suspend visa services in Turkey has punished citizens of both countries, he said, accusing Washington of taking an emotional and inappropriate step against an ally.
In a blunt speech to ruling AK Party parliamentarians, Yildirim also defended Turkey’s arrest of the US consulate employee. “Turkey is not a tribal state, we will retaliate against what has been done in kind,” he said.
“Who are you punishing?” Yildirim said. “You are making your citizens and ours pay the price.”
“... We call on the United States to be more reasonable. The issue must, of course, be resolved as soon as possible,” he said, describing US behavior as “unbecoming” of an ally.
Relations between the countries have been plagued by disputes over US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and Turkey’s calls for US-based Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen’s extradition. Ankara accuses Gulen of orchestrating a failed military coup against Erdogan in which more than 240 people were killed.
US courts have also indicted a Turkish banker and a former minister for conspiring to violate US sanctions on Iran, as well as 15 of Erdogan’s security guards for attacking peaceful protesters during his visit to Washington in May.
“Did you ask permission from us when you dragged a general manager from our national bank into jail?” Yildirim said. “Why are you harboring Gulen? Does this fit our alliance or friendship?”
Yildirim said if the US wanted to continue its alliance with Turkey it should stop support for YPG fighters battling Daesh in Syria. Turkey says the YPG is an extension of the outlawed PKK which has fought a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey.
“Siding with our enemies is not fitting our alliances,” he said.
Turkish officials to boycott US envoy: Erdogan
Turkish officials to boycott US envoy: Erdogan
Thousands of Libyans gather for the funeral of Qaddafi’s son who was shot and killed this week
- As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him
- Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details
BANI WALID, Libya: Thousands converged on Friday in northwestern Libya for the funeral of Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed earlier this week when four masked assailants stormed into his home and fatally shot him.
Mourners carried his coffin in the town of Bani Walid, 146 kilometers (91 miles) southeast of the capital, Tripoli, as well as large photographs of both Seif Al-Islam, who was known mostly by his first name, and his father.
The crowd also waved plain green flags, Libya’s official flag from 1977 to 2011 under Qaddafi, who ruled the country for more than 40 years before being toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011. Qaddafi was killed later that year in his hometown of Sirte as fighting in Libya escalated into a full-blown civil war.
As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him.
Attackers at his home
Seif Al-Islam, 53, was killed on Tuesday inside his home in the town of Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.
Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details. Seif Al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying “four masked men” had stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination,” after disabling security cameras.
Seif Al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while trying to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017, after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty.
“The pain of loss weighs heavily on my heart, and it intensifies because I can’t bid him farewell from within my homeland — a pain that words can’t ease,” Seif Al-Islam’s brother Mohamed Qaddafi, who lives in exile outside Libya though his current whereabouts are unknown, wrote on Facebook on Friday.
“But my solace lies in the fact that the loyal sons of the nation are fulfilling their duty and will give him a farewell befitting his stature,” the brother wrote.
Since the uprising that toppled Qaddafi, Libya plunged into chaos during which the oil-rich North African country split, with rival administrations now in the east and west, backed by various armed groups and foreign governments.
Qaddafi’s heir-apparent
Seif Al-Islam was Qaddafi’s second-born son and was seen as the reformist face of the Qaddafi regime — someone with diplomatic outreach who had worked to improve Libya’s relations with Western countries up until the 2011 uprising.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Seif Al-Islam that included a travel ban and an assets freeze for his inflammatory public statements encouraging violence against anti-Qaddafi protesters during the 2011 uprising. The International Criminal Court later charged him with crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.
In July 2021, Seif Al-Islam told the New York Times that he’s considering returning to Libya’s political scene after a decade of absence during which he observed Middle East politics and reportedly reorganized his father’s political supporters.
He condemned the country’s new leaders. “There’s no life here. Go to the gas station — there’s no diesel,″ Seif Al-Islam told the Times.
In November 2021, he announced his candidacy in the country’s presidential election in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Qaddafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.
The country’s High National Elections Committee disqualified him, but the election wasn’t held over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups.
