Turkey’s Erdogan brands western ambassadors ‘persona non grata,’ escalating confrontation with the U.S. and Europe

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Ankara declined to comment on Erdogan’s speech.

It came five days after the ambassadors signed a letter criticizing Turkey for Kavala’s years-long detention and delays in his trial, which had “cast a shadow over respect for democracy, the rule of law and transparency in the Turkish judiciary system,” they said.

Along with the U.S., France and Canada, the signatories included Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Kavala’s long legal odyssey — involving accusations human rights groups have derided as farcical — has come to symbolize the incessant crackdown by Erdogan on opposition figures, dissidents and other perceived enemies in the years since a failed coup against his government in 2016.

Erdogan’s attack on the ambassadors — several NATO allies among them — also threatened to further damage his government’s flailing efforts to repair Turkey’s economy and stabilize the local currency, a strategy Ankara has pursued in part by trying to improve relations with the United States and Europe.

A Turkish opposition leader suggested that Erdogan’s statements Saturday were in fact meant to deflect blame from economic problems of his own making, including the plummeting value of the Turkish lira. “These actions are not to protect the national interests, but to create artificial reasons for the economy that he has destroyed,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader the the opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP), wrote on Twitter.

An indictment against Kavala accused him in part of colluding with George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, to incite 2013 protests against Erdogan’s government. Kavala and Soros have both denied the charges, and Kavala was acquitted by a Turkish court last year, which ordered his release. Instead, prosecutors prepared new charges, accusing Kavala of trying to overthrow the government. He faces life in prison.

A statement Friday by Soros’ Open Society Foundations called the charges against Kavala “bogus” and urged Erdogan to stop “invoking George Soros’s name in an effort to obscure the facts around the case of Osman Kavala.” The statement said Kavala had served on the advisory board of the Open Society’s national foundation in Turkey until 2018.

On Saturday, Erdogan repeated the old allegations. “When you say Kavala, it means the Turkish branch of Soros,” he said.