“Unfortunately… the U.S. government still has not received any official communications from the Turkish government about the reasons why our local employees have been detained or arrested,” the US Ambassador to Turkey told reporters at the embassy in Ankara.
Meanwhile, on Monday the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the undersecretary of the US embassy in the country over Washington’s decision to halt visa services in Turkey, the Hurriyet newspaper reported. Washington says two locally employed staff were arrested in Turkey this year. In May, a translator at the consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested and last week a Drug Enforcement Administration worker was detained in Istanbul.
