US indictment against former minister in Iran embargo probe political, step against Turkey: Erdoğan 

U.S. prosecutors charging former Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran is a step taken against the Turkish Republic and is a political decision, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sept. 8. 

Erdoğan said he had told Washington that Turkey would not be a part of U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
   
"These steps are purely political," he told reporters before leaving Istanbul for Kazakhstan.

"The United States needs to revise this decision, there are very peculiar smells coming from this issue," Erdoğan said.
     
"I hope we'll get a chance to discuss this issue in the United States," he added.

"You may be a big nation, but being a just nation is something else. Being a just nation requires the legal system to work fairly," the president said.

Çağlayan,  former Halkbank general manager Aslan and the other two individuals are charged with "conspiring to use the U.S. financial system to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of transactions on behalf of the Government of Iran and other Iranian entities, which were barred by United States sanctions."

They were also accused of lying to U.S. government officials about those transactions, laundering funds and defrauding several financial institutions by concealing the true nature of these transactions.