Erdogan says Trump 'duped big time' by Zionists, promises sanctions on US officials

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – In his first remarks after the US sanctioned two of his ministers earlier in the week over the continued detention of an American pastor, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said his government would retaliate by taking a similar act against two cabinet members of US President Donald Trump.

“This is only a manifestation of an evangelist, Zionist attitude. That is the hearts of the matter. Mr. Trump here has been duped big time. Playmakers know this very well. Mr. Trump should dismantle the game,” Erdogan said, appearing to use a lighter tone against the White House, but attacking his right-wing supporters.

“We had patience until yesterday. But today I am giving orders to my friends. We are going to freeze America’s Justice and Interior Ministers’ properties in Turkey if there are any. If you do that, so shall we,” Erdogan said, addressing Ankara women’s congress of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) that leads the conservative majority at the Parliament.

On Wednesday, the White House announced the sanctions that hit Erdogan’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul over their role in the case of pastor Andrew Brunson who Turkish prosecutors accuse of collaboration with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and military coup-plotters.

Erdogan’s retaliatory move missed the target, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Representative to the United States Yurter Ozcan argued on Twitter. His party’s leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called for tit-for-tat sanctions on the US.

He said the capacities US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and US General Attorney Jeff Sessions acted were vastly different from their nominal Turkish counterparts in their respectively federal and strictly unitary countries.

Turkey arrested Brunson, who is now on house arrest, in late 2016 on charges of terrorism and espionage, with prosecutors asking for up to 35 years of imprisonment over secret witness testimonies who claimed the American pastor wanted to create “a Christian Kurdish state,” among other accusations.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany