A Turkish employee at the US consulate in Istanbul was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison on Thursday for " helping a terrorist group ", a move that is likely to strain relations between Ankara and Washington.
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Metin Topuz was sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison by an Istanbul court, according to the state news agency Anadolu. He was accused of helping the organization of Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, the bane of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who accused him of orchestrating a coup attempt in 2016. Fethullah Gülen refutes any involvement. According to the DHA news agency, the Istanbul court further ordered the detention of Metin Topuz.
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The Metin Topuz trial has poisoned relations between Turkey and the United States in recent years. Charged with the American consulate to liaise between the American authorities and the anti-drug trafficking brigade of the Turkish police, Metin Topuz was arrested in October 2017 and has since been held in pre-trial detention.
He was accused of espionage and of belonging to the Fethullah Gülen movement. The prosecutor dropped the first count last March and demanded 15 years in prison. Metin Topuz has always rejected the accusations and said that his contacts with people whom the Turkish authorities present as supporters of Fethullah Gülen were part of his job and that he was only " obey the orders "of his superiors at the consulate.
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His conviction comes at a time when Turkey is seeking to repair its relations with the United States, which have deteriorated sharply since 2016 due in particular to differences on the Syrian file and the arrest of several US consular employees, including Metin Topuz.
