The detention of US cleric Andrew Brunson in Turkey had weighed heavily on the relationship between the two countries. A few days ago, the pastor was released. Now the US government, according to its foreign minister Mike Pompeo, is thinking about ending the sanctions against Ankara.
Some of the punitive measures against Ankara are directly related to the case of the pastor, so it would be "logical" to lift them now, Pompeo said during a stopover on the return trip from a visit to Turkey. A decision is imminent.
The government in Ankara supported the announcement. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu did not comment directly on sanctions in connection with Brunson in Ankara. In general, however, such punitive measures are "nonsense" and hinder good bilateral relations.
The evangelical clergyman Brunson was released Friday after months of diplomatic tug-of-war. A court in Aliaga near Izmir suspended the house arrest and the exit ban for him. In the evening, the pastor left Turkey, where he had lived since 1993 and thus half of his life.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump received the White House clergy and stressed that his release was a "huge step" towards improving relations with Ankara.
Duties doubled
The detention of the US pastor two years ago had led to a serious crisis in relations between the US and Turkey. Brunson has been in Turkish custody since October 2016 and later in house arrest. The Turkish authorities accused him of supporting the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Gülen movement. The pastor always denied the allegations and asserted his innocence.
Because of the dispute over Brunson, the US government had imposed sanctions on two Turkish ministers and doubled the tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Turkey. Ankara responded with the same measures.