Why a New York Court Case Has Rattled Turkey’s President<br />They have cited the 2013 Turkish investigation in court papers filed in New York where nine men — including<br />a senior Turkish bank official — have been charged with conspiring to evade American sanctions on Iran.<br />A day earlier, Mr. Erdogan described the indictment as "a step against the Turkish Republic."<br />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.<br />Mr. Caglayan and Mr. Aslan are not in custody of either the United States or Turkey; Mr. Zarrab has been<br />jailed in the United States since March 2016, after being arrested during a family trip to Disney World.<br />And the defendants charged in the United States are accused, in part, of returning to a version of the gas-for-gold<br />scheme — a course of action Turkish investigators say the men took after they had spoken with Mr. Erdogan.<br />In one of the conversations, on Sept. 19, 2013, Mr. Zarrab claimed<br />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.<br />One question now is whether one or more of the defendants — two of whom are jailed in New York<br />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.<br />According to the recordings, Mr. Erdogan spoke with Messrs. Zarrab, Caglayan<br />and Aslan about the need to restore Turkish export figures to the record high of the previous year.
