Cooperating with the american authorities. A federal prosecutor disclosed tuesday. The focus of discussion next. E we will show you all 70 minutes of it next. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Im the director of National Security at the bipat srtisan center. I am pleased to see that some people are hungry for turkey. That is my only thanksgiving joke. I will live the it at that. We are here to discuss where in the world is raza harab, he has mysteriously disappeared. But perhaps just as interestingly as that, a question of why this case which involves allegations of this businessman helping iran e evade u. S. Sanctions, why is that a Sticking Point for u. S. turkey relations. Im pleased to have an expert panel with us. But first i want to announce a couple products coming out today. We are an explainer on the case of what it is and why its important. We also launchinging a Broader Initiative in occurty, the firsthand written paper on the topics and allows to you explore the links and the impbt up you will be able to zoom through the constellation of power and corruption in turkey. With that, let me go to the panel. We have a turkish jornlist taniir writing for a new outlet. Dr. Pornel, stroll and bbcs very own nick dan worth, expert on all things turkish and other things too. Let me start with you. Can you give us a summary of what the case is about . What are the allegations in this case . Sure, thank you. Thanks for the invitation. M m and the rest in march of 2016 f and became very, very famous in hurkey. I think he stayed in jail in turkey for i dont know. A couple months and then he was kind of forgotten in turkey. But still seems he was and he still is married a pop star in turkey. Everybody knows and more or less, he has been untouched against since 2013 but last year, in 2016, he got arrested. It was a shock to everyone. And he has been in jail since then. We dont since then. We dont know if hes still in jail but we know for sure hes under u. S. Federal custody right,000. There are lots of speculations whether hes in hotel or somewhere else but hes under custody. So that have been for indictmen indictments. First one came right after zaza got arrested. The second one came about a year ago, actually day before u. S. Elections, expanded second indictment included rzaz rzaza zarabs brother, mohammed zarrab. And when the second person got arrested from hap bank who was deputy manager. And he has been still in jail. And fourth one is just came out Early September the most expanded one and included former finance minister, economic minister zafar and chellian plus the chairman general of hac bank, turkish public bank. Maslan. Palkan who is the International Deputy general manager who was taking care of international banking. So total of nine people. It really hit turkey. Mr. Erdogan what are they charged with . There are six counts and four charges, separate charges. One of them, conspiracy against United States. Basically the fraud in the United States. The other is defrauding u. S. Banking. The other one is Money Laundering. The fourth one is will come back to me. About 75 years they are asking for. For reza zarrab. But experts say actually if the judge counts every transaction in this Money Laundering it could be really, really long, which apparently is the how these things go. So we are looking at maybe more than a century of jail sentence. All these allegations, of course. Reza zarrab was not convicted in turkey. And dismissed his charges. And the police and the prosecutors who launched those investigations also dismissed and i think many of them either fled or in jail. And here 20 months we have seen dozens of pretrial conferences, hearings. But we have not so far had a person, convicted person that we can say. So these are allegations. Svante, johan alluded to the background of this of zarrabs arrest in 2013. Can you tell us the context for that . Sure. For me the case of reza zarrab is very symptom mick of turkishamerican relations right now. Because if you are so to speak in turkey or if you are in the United States you are living on different planets in many ways. And what you interpret when you see the details of the case are completely different. Its the lack of trust at the end of the day. And id go even further, the very deep suspicion, mutual suspicion that exists mainly from turkeyy and that is of course that you cant understand the reza zarrab case without understanding the Gulen Movement in turkey. From the superficial American Perspective this is an issue about corruption and this is an issue about sanctions busting. And therefore, this is a legal case and it has a judicial process. Im not saying that anybody in the u. S. Would say that this is purely out of politics. But its mainly a legal case, right . This is not only an issue of manipulating political things. But we have to remember the way the whole reza zarrab case came out was by the december 2013 raids that were directly targeted at president erdogan and his proxies, family members and his close associates, and i think the interesting thing about the december 13 raids is they were not about just any kind of corruption case. We know there is a clientistic economy that has been built up in turkey. But the allegations and the raids of december 2013 focused particularly on those issues that were the most damaging for erdogan from an American Perspective. We have the cases of, you know, Al Qaedalinked saudi financiers that he had been meeting with that were raised. We also had obviously the issues about the iran sanctions. The fact these raids targeted specifically those things, not just ordinary corruption but specific things that would be damaging for erdogan are very important. And we know now the prosecutors who were involved i think beyond any reasonable doubt were affiliated with the Gulen Movement and this is why this in turkey was understood by erdogan and his associates and friends and supporters as a judicial coup against erdogan. This is the background to how they see it. Now, obviously then following this we have a we had elections, we had referenda. We had a coup last year that erdogan with quite strong evidence alleges the Gulen Movement to be the leading well, he says it was all good the Gulen Movement. I would say it was certainly about the Gulen Movement but it was much broader than that and its much more complicated than that. But in any case, this means that from the perspective of erdogan and his supporters when suddenly reza zarrab gets arrested in the United States and indicted in the United States this is not just an ordinary legal procedure in the u. S. This is about a continuation of the coup against him. And what we have to understand and which i think most people may not be fully internalize is from erdogan and his supporters perspective gulen is not an autonomous actor. Id suggest to anybody interested in Turkish Affairs to read a book written by daniel pipes 20 years about conspiracyism in the middle east and how Conspiracy Theory thinking. The interesting thing about his book which was mainly about the arab and iranian worlds. Had an appendix for turkey that said this is not relevant for turkey today but may be in the future. That future has arrived. Everything in turkey is based on conspiracy theery, and therefore we have to whether we agree, disagree, that for erdogan and his supporters the Gulen Movement is an americancontrolled operation and therefore a gulenorchestrated coup against him is an american coup against him. And for that perspective for erdogan what were seeing in new york is part and parcel of an american effort to overthrow him. Im not saying i agree with that. Im just saying we have to understand that this is not just a propaganda thing for erdogan and his media. Obviously, they use propaganda very effectively. But this is what they appear very strongly to believe. So nick, maybe picking up from that, could you talk a little bit about how this turkish view of what the zarrab case is about has played out in u. S. Turkish relations in recent months and where it might go from here . Ill very much follow up on what svante was saying and that right now were in a situation where people in turkey, not just people reading the papers in turkey but people at high levels of the turkish government and people in the United States really are living in different realities, both in regards to this case and to the broader context of the u. S. Turkish relationship. As svante said, to understand this case its wrth looking at both how this case has helped perpetuate those different realities and helped exacerbate and will continue to help exacerbate many of the deep divides in u. S. Turkish relations but also to try back and show beyond the gulen issue, which im glad you highlighted, how the inaccept yent divergent opinions about turkeys role in the world and the u. S. Turkish relationship in itself going back to 2012t2013 when this ca came into being how this sxats crisis we find ourselves in now was in itself a result of a growing divergence that predates it. In that respect from the United States perspective people look at this as a very simple legal matter. Zarrab and his turkish accomplices violated u. S. Law, now theyre being tried for it in u. S. Court. The turkish response to this very clearly has been, you know, what right does america have to make it against the law for us turkey to do business with iran . These werent United Nations sanctions, turkey claims, this was a bilateral trade between two sovereign countries, why is this in violation of u. S. Law . And up to a point i think its worth acknowledging where this argument is coming from. Certainly the United States by virtue yew of the vast sweep of its Financial Sector does have a unique ability to make our National Interest into a matter of universally enforceable law. If these were id say paraguays sanctions against iran and turkey had done what it did, zarrab would not be facing trial right now. But that only goes so far. The point is also worth mentioning, and i think this is where the problem really goes back to how the akp approached this issue in 2012. They may not have agreed with the United States laws. They may not have agreed with the United States sanctions against iran. Indeed at the time they made it clear they had concerns about u. S. Sanctions against iran. However, at the point when these sanctions were put in place, at the point when people in the turkish government and people in the turkish Banking Sector knew these laws were in place, they were also aware of the consequences of breaking them. And at that point the decision to go ahead with this gas for gold scheme was taken with the knowledge these actions were against u. S. Laws. Thats why turkish ministers accepted large bribes for allowing these actions to go forward. So there is in this context something problematic about presenting the consequences that turkey not just individual turkish citizens but the entire turkish economy is now facing as a result of these actions as a conspiracy against turkey. These are the result of actions taken against turkish government officials often for personal profit. Im sure they genuinely believe they were also doing it for turkeys National Interests. In a conscious decision to violate u. S. Laws which whether or not they agreed with them they should have realized were going to have consequences. In addition to the legal issue id make a very similar point about the broader geopolitical context in which this has happened. Turkey has long had a very complicated relationship with iran. The two countries have been rivals and neighbors for centuries now. At the time the gas for gold scheme was taking place, turkey was actually in a period of considerable tension with iran visavis their very divergent positions in the syrian civil war. Yet at the same time turkey saw the geopolitical benefits and the economic benefits of maintaining a functional relationship with iran and helping iran evade u. S. Sanctions. This has been a matter of considerable outrage for many in the United States, to which people in turkey have pointed out that turkey is not the first country, not the only country to maintain economically profitable relationships with a very nasty regime. Turkey is not the first country to maintain good relations with lets say oppressive but hydrocarbon rich state that has a long history of promoting islamic extremism in the middle east. Turkey is not alone in doing this. However, whats worth noting is that this happened in the context of turkey being a nato ally. This happened in the context of turkey being irans neighbor, having deep geopolitical differences with iran. Turkey, had it not been for turkeys nato membership, turkey would have had every reason to be terrified of Irans Nuclear program. No country would be excited about a neighbor developing Nuclear Weapons if they did not have them. The reason turkey was not as concerned about this as they would otherwise have to be was because it was a nato member, because it enjoyed natos nuclear umbrella, because it had nato protecting it from any Nuclear Weapons iran might get. At a time when turkey was relying on nato protection in the case that iran did develop Nuclear Weapons, for it to then take actions that undermined natos or leading nato countries efforts to stop Irans Nuclear program seems like a pretty deep violation of the spirit of the alliance. I think thats a really interesting issue and maybe we can bookend this question of turkeys position between the u. S. And iran and maybe how that shifted because it also gets us to events of the last couple days with erdogan going to sochi and meeting with both president putin and hassan rouhani. The phone call that erdogan and trump had on friday and what that might mean. If we could bracket that sort of issue and talk more about the case itself and what it means. A couple questions. Lets start with this. Svante, you mentioned for most of the last year when turkey has talked about its concerns about u. S. Legal issues its been talking about gulen and asking for the extradition of gulen to turkey. It hasnt talked so much about the zarrab issue, at least until recently. Why is that i guess is the question. Is there a greater emphasis, is there more concern in turkey about gulen than there is zarrab . Have they only just pivoted recently to paying attention to zarrab . Why the disparate focus on gulen until now . I guess i have two ways to answer that. One is that theres an obsession with the gulen issue, which is an understandable obsession. Because after all it is very erdogan was a person who enabled the Gulen Movement to spread in the bureaucracy the way it did because of a, as it turned out, erroneous belief that because both his movement from the naksha bendi origin and was sunni muslims they would support me because i am the leader of the sunni dlimuslims and they wt betray me. What turned out was there was a power struggle between the two coalitions and that power struggle has basically destroyed the turkish state. That is quite damaging for everyone because everyone in turkey understands that erdogan was the person whoen abled the rise of the gulenist wave started earlier. It started in the 70s, 80s, but he enabled the spread of gul gulenists and the rise to power across the Turkish Society because it i talked to a good friend in turkey last night, very secularist, foreign trained, who said we need erdogan because hes the only person who can get rid of the gulenists from the whole system of the state. So its very strange so is the assumption in that statement that he hasnt done that yet . Yes. For example, the akp itself has not been purged. A lot of state institutions have been purged. The party has not been fully purged. And i think the what im trying to get to is that maintaining the pressure on the gulen issue is both for the domestic political regime stability of erdogan a necessity but its also something that unites him with his new coalition partners, if you will. Now, where erdogans earlier coalition as we all know was based on conservatives, liberals, and kurds, its now been turned since 2015 really but even more so after the coup into a strong Tactical Alliance with the neonationalist forces. They usually refer to as the you eurasianist forces, ethnic nationalists in the state and military. They are highly skeptical if not hostile to the United States and to the west, and this focus on gulen unites them and i would say also the tensions with the United States and the suspicion that the zarrab case generates strengthens the neonational forces in the turkish government and puts him and erdogan in the same bed if you will. Ilhan, do you think erdogan really wants gulen back . Is it just sort of this tactical political ploy . I do believe he really wants him back. The reason i do believe that, the latest revelations about how he tried to get him through mike flynn affairs, if were to believe, obviously these are the claims and have not been confirmed yet but i think what erdogans government have been wanting, fete yooula gulen back to turkey. But at the same time whether he wants zarrab more or Fethullah Gulen more is the question. We now know that in september 21st of 2016 when the president erdogan spok