In a rare public admission, former Turkish prime minister and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has provided one of the clearest first-hand accounts to date of how Ankara deliberately bypassed US sanctions on Iran.
THE NORDIC MONITOR -- Turkey openly rejected the embargo regime and constructed alternative financial channels that later spiraled into one of the largest sanctions-evasion cases ever prosecuted in the United States.
Speaking at length on the nationalist-leaning TiVi6 television station on January 14, Davutoğlu did not deny the core allegation that Turkey continued extensive economic relations with Iran despite mounting American pressure. On the contrary, he defended the policy as a deliberate and conscious choice made at the highest levels of the Turkish state.
“We told the Americans very clearly that we did not consider the embargo on our neighbor Iran to be legitimate,” he said. “Turkey had energy needs, Turkey had economic interests, and we never saw it as acceptable to cut off a country with which we share one of the oldest borders in the world.”
