MANHATTAN (CN) — President Donald Trump has a golden chip stashed up his sleeve as he welcomes Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the budding authoritarian leader of Turkey, to the White House on Tuesday. Unlike in past casino ventures, however, the stakes here involve U.S. national-security goals in the Middle East.
At their center is Reza Zarrab, a Turkish gold trader facing federal charges in New York City of laundering tens of millions of dollars for Iran and for banks whose involvement in the country’s nuclear program ended in sanctions.
After Zarrab's arrest last year, then-Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Loretta Lynch both rebuffed lobbying for his release by Erdogan. The Turkish president is tied to the same 2013 corruption scandal in Turkey that sparked Zarrab's pending U.S. prosecution.
When Erdogan cemented his autocratic rule in an April referendum on Turkey’s constitution, however, the White House reported that Trump called to offer congratulations. Erdogan is likely hoping, as he settles in for Tuesday's meeting, that Trump's real estate interests in Istanbul will make for a more receptive audience.
Trump also has a number of high-profile allies in Turkey’s pocket. Just this year, Zarrab drafted to his legal team former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Giuliani had been a surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail, and his new employer, the law firm Greenberg Traurig, is registered as an agent for the Turkish government.
Discussing the case in a phone interview, David Phillips, a former adviser to the United Nations Secretariat and the U.S. State Department, said Erdogan’s strategy to spring Zarrab from federal prosecution hinges on influence peddling.
[blockquote author=" David Phillips, director of the Peace-Building and Human Rights Program at Columbia University" style="1"]Everyone has a price in Trump’s world, including the president himself. Let’s see if U.S. foreign policy can be bought.”[/blockquote]“Everyone has a price in Trump’s world, including the president himself,” said Phillips, who leads the Peace-Building and Human Rights Program at Columbia University. “Let’s see if U.S. foreign policy can be bought.”
In addition to negotiating on Zarrab, Erdogan has bargained for U.S. extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based cleric accused of trying to topple the Turkish leader last year in a failed coup.
Both prosecutions are seen as bargaining chips for Turkey’s broader gambit of shaping U.S. diplomacy in Raqqa, a city just over the Syrian border that the Islamic State group has made its capital.
As part of its effort to liberate the city, the United States has been arming Kurdish militants. Turkey meanwhile has faced a separatist insurgency spearheaded by ethnic Kurds for the past several decades. Though the Pentagon has committed to monitor all the weapons it sends the Kurds, Turkey wants the artillery aid shut off.