Whom is the US actually trying to put on trial?

Halk Bank Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla was detained in the US the other day. After Atilla's detention, certain circles close to FETÖ or used by FETÖ began presenting the December 17-25 coup attempt once again as a corruption operation. The fact that events suddenly began to follow such a course allows us to draw some inferences about why Atilla was detained and what this unlawful act aims at. To understand what has happened more soundly, it is also worth recalling some matters that touch on our foreign policy.

Relations between the US and Iran deteriorated seriously after the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Khomeini, who came to power in Iran, which during the Shah's regime the US regarded as its forward outpost in the region, signaled with his "Great Satan" statement how relations with the US would proceed. Although a tendency toward détente was observed in the Rafsanjani and Khatami periods after Khomeini, relations became thoroughly strained in the Ahmadinejad period.

In August 2002, when Alireza Jafarzadeh of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group to the Iranian regime based in the US, announced at a press conference, with some photographs, that Iran was running a nuclear program secret from the whole world, an outcry arose.

As debates and pressures increased, the then President Khatami admitted in early 2003 that his country was conducting a nuclear program for the purpose of energy production. This statement increased the pressure on Iran. At that time Ali Baradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared in a statement that Iran had violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) with nuclear work it had carried out without informing the agency.

As pressure intensified, Iran signed the additional protocol of the NPT, but this move did not end the pressures on Iran.

In particular, the pressure the US applied to Iran over its nuclear program continued to grow.

The Ahmadinejad administration's attempt, instead of reducing tension, to use this tension in shaping Iranian domestic politics, and the equally instrumental use of Iran's nuclear program by Israel in US policy, brought with them a transformation of the process in some way.

The sanctions applied to Iran had also gradually begun to change in scale.

So much so that a clique within the US seemed to want to make Iran still more aggressive and to push Iran outside the system. While talk of war being at the door was under way, Turkey and Brazil stepped in. Obama, writing a letter to Brazil's then president Lula, asked him to make an effort to persuade Ankara to have Iran's enriched uranium placed in Turkey's custody. In fact, the same proposal had earlier also been made by IAEA head Baradei.

Through the mediation of Turkey and Brazil, a compromise was reached for bringing Iran's nuclear program under control.

But whatever happened, happened after this, and the solution found to the problem was rejected.

The Tehran Declaration, which symbolized the agreement reached among Iran, Brazil and Turkey, was not implemented, and the sanctions applied to Iran were expanded.

The most striking of these sanctions was the removal of Iran's Swift code, aimed at placing Iran entirely in the position of a Rogue State.

Removing Iran from the Swift code system used in global transfer transactions opened Iran entirely to the unrecorded economy.

In this process, the countries that conducted barter-style trade with Iran extracted large amounts of surplus value from Iran.

Turkey, for its part, continued its trade with Iran through a branch of Halk Bankası that was left open in Tehran.

In this way, an honest trade regime with Iran was maintained, and Iran was also prevented from falling entirely outside the system. The payments required for the energy resources imported from Iran were deposited into the Iranian Central Bank's account at the Tehran Branch of Halk Bankası.

Thus, up to that time a historic peak in bilateral trade relations was also seen. In 2010, Turkey's imports from Iran reached 10 billion dollars.

Halk Bankası's role in these critical processes led to its being used in operations carried out against the government. The first of these operations was the December 17-25 process. An attempt was made to overthrow an elected government through an argument to which Turkish society is sensitive, such as corruption, and through the juntaization of the judiciary as a self-legitimating power.

The perception that FETÖ tried to develop through Halk Bankası was among the backbones of the process.

Now, with Turkey entering the referendum process, a new operation is being attempted through Halk Bankası.

The operation developing via Halk Bankası has such a historical adventure behind it.

Nowadays a new process is under way through the US-based Halk Bankası.

You know, the very one

after the July 15

coup attempt, US officials who phoned the coup attempt's fugitive Adil Öksüz on his phone are detaining Mehmet Hakan Atilla on the charge of breaching the embargo on Iran.

Looking at the picture as a whole, what emerges is that the US is in fact trying to put on trial not the Halk Bankası Deputy General Manager but Turkey's regional role.

Is there any reason not to see the process as another leg of the international operation directed at Turkey?

Moreover, with the aid and harboring it is currently giving to all elements of FETÖ as a terrorist organization, and with its open cooperation with the PYD/PKK, again a terrorist organization, is the US, which ought to be on the defensive, in any position to criticize Turkey in any way, let alone put it on trial?