Erdoğan questions US partnership over visa row

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday questioned the sincerity of the U.S. strategic partnership with Turkey following a recent visa row.

The row was sparked on Oct. 8, when the U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced the suspension of non-immigrant visa services for Turkish nationals, following the arrest of a local employee at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Ankara.

"Who said this? The ambassador in Ankara. Who is this ambassador? If he [the ambassador] can just say 'we suspended the visas' in a paragraph on behalf of the great U.S., then I will have to reconsider the strategic partnership," he said, at the closing session of the TRT World Forum in Istanbul, referring to the outgoing U.S. Ambassador John Bass.

Metin Topuz, a U.S. consulate employee, was arrested last week over alleged ties to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), the group behind last year’s defeated coup attempt in Turkey.

Ankara accuses FETÖ and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gülen of orchestrating the defeated coup which martyred 250 people and wounded nearly 2,200.