Countering Corruption in the OSCE Region: Returning Ill-Gotten Assets and Closing Safe Havens

By Everett Price, Policy Advisor One year ago today, Turkish authorities detained Hamza Uluçay, a 36-year veteran Turkish employee of the U.S. Consulate in the southern city of Adana. After decades of service to the United States, he spent the last year behind bars on unsubstantiated terrorism charges.    Authorities initially questioned Uluçay last February about his communications with local Kurdish contacts. Such communication with local contacts, including peaceful Kurdish groups, would have been a routine part of the U.S consulate’s work. Yet within hours of his initial detention, the Turkish press claimed that Uluçay was suspected of inciting public support for the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that has been engaged in a more than three-decade armed conflict with the Turkish state. After more than a week in custody, Uluçay was released for lack of sufficient evidence only to be re-detained hours later due to a prosecutor’s objections. This time Uluçay was formally arrested and faced graver charges. He stood accused of “membership in a terrorist organization,” a reference purportedly to the PKK and the Gulen movement, the religious and social movement the Turkish government accuses of orchestrating the failed coup in July 2016. Little is known about the prosecution’s evidence against Uluçay. According to Turkish press, authorities seized 21 U.S. dollar bills from Uluçay’s home. As seen in the case of imprisoned U.S. citizen and NASA scientist Serkan Golge, Turkish prosecutors regularly cite one dollar bills as “evidence” of a defendant’s involvement with the Gulen movement. The government claims that the founder of the movement and alleged coup mastermind, Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, gave blessed dollar bills to his followers, particularly those with serial numbers beginning with “F” for “Fethullah.” Uluçay’s experience is another sobering reminder of the state of the rule of law in Turkey, where a single dollar bill can stand as “evidence” of terrorist activity.  Authorities also seized on Uluçay’s possession of books about Kurdish politics and terrorism: typical possessions for a political specialist whose job is to help American diplomats understand conditions in southeast Turkey. U.S. embassies and consulates around the world hire local staff like Uluçay to facilitate engagement with local contacts and to advise on political and cultural dynamics in the host country.  Since U.S. diplomats rotate among overseas posts every few years, locally employed staff (or LES, as they are known) often serve as important focal points of continuity and institutional memory in the work of a diplomatic mission. In Uluçay’s case, he offered successive rotations of American diplomats in Adana decades’ worth of established relationships and experience working with local groups and individuals.   As LES directly support U.S. diplomatic representation in a country, it is rare for host nation authorities to openly interfere with their work, least of all in countries with friendly relations with the United States. For this reason—and in the absence of credible evidence to support the serious allegations against him—the detention of Uluçay last February represented a significant diplomatic incident.  The affront was compounded seven months later when Turkish authorities detained another longtime Turkish employee of a U.S. consulate, this time in Istanbul. Metin Topuz was taken into custody on September 25 and shortly thereafter charged with “membership in a terrorist organization,” “gathering state secrets for espionage,” and “attempting to overthrow [the Government, Turkish National Assembly, and the Constitutional Order].”  Topuz had spent more than 20 years working for the U.S. consulate where he helped officers of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration liaise with Turkish counterparts. According to Turkish press reports, his official communications had brought him into contact with suspected Gulen-affiliated officers in the Turkish security services. Topuz, therefore, was accused of belonging to the so-called “Fethullah Terrorist Organization,” or “FETO.” U.S. officials tried in vain to obtain a credible justification from Turkish authorities for Topuz’s arrest only to see them target a second employee of the Istanbul Consulate General for arrest, Mete Canturk.  In response to these developments, on October 8 the United States announced the indefinite suspension of non-immigrant visa services in Turkey. Then-U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass announced the decision in a videotaped statement, commenting, “Despite our best efforts to learn the reasons for [Topuz’s] arrest, we have been unable to determine why it occurred or what, if any, evidence exists against the employee.” “This arrest,” he continued, “has raised questions about whether the goal of some officials is to disrupt the long-standing cooperation between Turkey and the United States.”  The State Department resumed limited visa services in Turkey on November 6 and restored full services on December 28 after receiving assurances from Turkish authorities that no additional local employees were under investigation, that local staff will not be detained for performing their official duties, and that Turkish officials would provide the United States advanced warning of any future arrest. Nevertheless, both Uluçay and Topuz remain in custody to this day. In addition, on January 31, 2018 authorities placed Canturk, the other LES who was sought by authorities in October, under house arrest allegedly for links to the Gulen movement. Although formal charges have yet to be filed, he has been unable to return to work. The U.S. Helsinki Commission convened a hearing on November 15 to examine the deterioration of Turkey’s rule of law and the ongoing detention of Uluçay, Topuz, and several U.S. citizens on coup-related charges. In his testimony before the Commission, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Turkey Jonathan R. Cohen stated, “It appears to us that Mr. Uluçay and Mr. Topuz were arrested for maintaining legitimate contacts with Turkish government and local officials and others in the context of their official duties on behalf of the U.S. government.” Helsinki Commissioners have raised their cases on several occasions and will continue to do so until they are released. In May, the Helsinki Commission’s bicameral, bipartisan leadership led a letter with the bipartisan House co-chairs of the Lantos Human Rights Commission urging President Trump to raise Uluçay’s case directly with President Erdogan during the latter’s official visit to Washington that month.  Later in the year, ten Commissioners wrote to Turkish President Erdogan calling on him to help swiftly resolve Uluçay and Topuz’s cases, among others. While chairing the Commission’s November hearing, Senate Commissioner Thom Tillis said, “The harassment and detention of our consulate staff has…overstepped the bounds of diplomatic conduct among partners.” Sen. Tillis clearly expressed that the United States should “not accept anything short of true and timely justice for our detained consulate staff and our citizens behind bars.” One year since his detention, justice for Hamza Uluçay—like others—remains a distant prospect.  

By Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor and John Engelken, Intern On Saturday, December 9, the Helsinki Commission joins the United Nations and many others in recognizing International Anti-Corruption Day, which is of particular importance today given the ease with which illicit financial flows traverse national borders. International Anti-Corruption Day was established as part of the UN’s passage of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which was adopted on October 31, 2003. This legally binding international agreement focuses on five key areas of anti-corruption policy: preventive measures, criminalization and law enforcement, international cooperation, asset recovery, and technical assistance and information exchange. Given corruption’s global nature, disproportionate victimization of economically vulnerable communities, and corrosion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, participating in anti-corruption efforts worldwide is a central responsibility of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the U.S. Helsinki Commission. No form of corruption is so insidious as kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves.” Kleptocrats abuse the global financial system, moving massive wealth from their home countries to nations where the rule of law is more established; they then use these ill-gotten funds to finance crime and terrorism, fund extravagant lifestyles, and corrode political institutions from the inside out. The frequency with which kleptocratic regimes engage in corrupt activity and money-laundering to maintain political power and accumulate material wealth emphasizes the need for governments and international bodies to coordinate more closely and step up their work to root out corruption. It also emphasizes the need for countries where the rule of law is respected to adopt reforms that make it more difficult for kleptocrats to abuse their legal and financial frameworks. Encompassing a region that contains both corrupt kleptocracies that steal state and business assets and rule-of-law democracies in which those stolen assets are hidden, the OSCE is uniquely situated to confront the problem of corruption, and has taken on a number of commitments to do just that. In particular, the 2012 Dublin Declaration and the 2014 Basel Decision contain language calling for domestic reforms consistent with the rule of law and political transparency initiatives, in tandem with more concerted anti-corruption efforts. In addition, these texts contain commitments to combat the transnational money-laundering that makes grand corruption possible and encourage private firms to play a greater role in identifying and countering corruption. The U.S. Helsinki Commission regularly highlights the problem of corruption through public events, publications, and statements. In 2017 alone, the Commission has held four briefings on the issue – Countering Corruption in the OSCE Region: Returning Ill-Gotten Assets and Closing Safe Havens; Energy (In)Security in Russia’s Periphery; Kleptocrats of the Kremlin: Ties Between Business and Power in Russia; and Ukraine’s Fight against Corruption – as well as two Congressional hearings, The Romanian Anti-Corruption Process: Successes and Excesses and Combating Kleptocracy With Incorporation Transparency. In addition, the Commission has published two short thematic articles, Russia’s Weaponization of Corruption (And Western Complicity) and Beyond Pipelines: Breaking Russia’s Grip on Post-Soviet Energy Security, as well as a brief overview of corruption in Russia and an in-depth report on Ukraine’s fight against corruption. Finally, the Commission’s Chairman, Senator Roger Wicker, recently made a statement regarding Ukraine’s fight against corruption. On International Anti-Corruption Day, the Helsinki Commission remains committed to doing its part in the fight against corruption and applauds the efforts of other national, international, and non-governmental organizations doing the same.