The Wall Street Journal - 14.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ***** Thursday, November 14, 2019 |A

WORLD NEWS

President Trump spoke during a news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Wednesday.

EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

dogan.

When Sen. Ted Cruz (R.,

Texas) expressed concern over

the plight of the Kurds, it

prompted a lengthy response

from Mr. Erdogan who sought

to school him and his col-

leagues on the difference be-

tween Kurds and what he

called terrorists.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.),

chairman of the House Foreign

Affairs Committee, called the

White House decision to hold

the meeting a mistake and

said Mr. Trump “let Turkey off

the hook for invading Syria,

causing a mass exodus of

Kurds, and purchasing the

S-400 missile system from

Russia.”

nist who chided Mr. Trump for

U.S. ties to Mr. Abdi, the Kurd-

ish commander seen by Tur-

key as a violent opponent. Mr.

Erdogan stood stoically as Mr.

Trump first fielded the ques-

tion, then asked the columnist:

“Are you sure you don’t work

for Turkey, with that ques-

tion?”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.,

S.C.), a critic of Mr. Erdogan,

turned to reporters sitting be-

hind him in the East Room and

commented: “There aren’t any

others left.”

Earlier Wednesday, Mr.

Trump had invited reporters

into the Oval Office for a few

minutes as lawmakers arrived

for their meeting with Mr. Er-

“causing massive displacement

of the residents, in clear viola-

tion of the ceasefire agree-

ment.”

The visit on Wednesday

centered on personal dynam-

ics. The last time Mr. Erdogan

came to the White House, he

and Mr. Trump delivered joint

statements, but took no ques-

tions from reporters. Wednes-

day’s event involved more fan-

fare, including an East Room

press conference, attended by

dignitaries and several Repub-

lican senators. Mr. Trump in-

vited Mr. Erdogan to call on a

member of the Turkish media,

advising he select “a friendly

reporter from Turkey.” Mr. Er-

dogan picked a Turkish colum-

Countering America’s Adver-

saries Through Sanctions Act

over the S-400 purchase.

On fighting in Syria, Mr.

Trump asserted that the

cease-fire in northern Syria

was holding. An agreement

negotiated by Vice President

Mike Pence last month called

for Syrian Kurds to pull back

from the border area and for

Turkey to stop its military ad-

vance. But that statement was

challenged by Mazloum Abdi,

the commander of the Kurd-

ish-led SDF, who said in a

Twitter post after an initial

Trump-Erdogan meeting

Wednesday that Turkish forces

had launched attacks on the

Syrian town of Tal Tamar,

ahead of Wednesday’s meet-

ing, insisting that “continued

dialogue” was as important as

achieving results.

The Pentagon has said the

Russian S-400 could be used

by the Kremlin to gather intel-

ligence on the U.S.’s stealthy

new F-35 jet fighters. After

Turkey went ahead with its

purchase from Russia, the U.S.

said it was withholding sales

of the jets to Turkey. The U.S.

also suspended Ankara’s role

in the production program, a

costly move for Turkish com-

panies that have manufactured

more than 900 parts for the

plane. U.S. officials have ex-

plored a compromise in which

Turkey would keep the S-

system but not operate it, thus

enabling the U.S. to sell the

planes to Ankara and restore

its participation in the F-

program. But Mr. Erdogan

gave no indication in his pub-

lic remarks that he would ac-

cept such an arrangement. Mr.

Trump said only that there

were “lots of options” to re-

solve the dispute.

Despite calls from Congress

for tough action, Mr. Trump

has held back from imposing

sanctions under the 2017

A long-awaited meeting be-
tween President Trump and
Turkey’s leader ended
Wednesday without a resolu-
tion of key issues on which the
two sides have been divided,
including Ankara’s purchase of
a Russian air-defense system
and the U.S. partnership with
the Kurdish-led Syrian Demo-
cratic Forces.
The chemistry between Mr.
Trump and Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan domi-
nated the visit. Mr. Trump vol-
unteered that he was a “big
fan” of Mr. Erdogan. The Turk-
ish leader called for a new
chapter in relations between
the two countries.
But there was no indication
of headway on Turkey’s pur-
chase of the sophisticated
S-400 air-defense missile sys-
tem from Russia, which has
been a major concern for the
Pentagon, or on other issues
that have led to a deteriorat-
ing view of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization ally
among most U.S. lawmakers.
Administration officials
tried to lower expectations

BYVIVIANSALAMA
ANDMICHAELR.GORDON

Trump-Erdogan

Meeting Yields

Little Progress

ernment of Turkey in a variety

of matters over the years, in-

cluding federal litigation. But

we are proscribed from com-

menting on this matter due to

the attorney-client privilege.”

The law firm also represents

Turkey’s government in civil

lawsuits brought by individuals

who say they were attacked by

members of Mr. Erdogan’s se-

curity detail while demonstrat-

ing peacefully during the Turk-

ish president’s last visit to

Washington in May 2017.

The documents reviewed by

the Journal include dozens of

pages that denote authorship

by Saltzman & Evinch, as well

as some material profiling sus-

pected Gulenists in the U.S.

that is of uncertain origin.

None of the material suggests

that covert surveillance opera-

tions or electronic hacking of

the groups and individuals

was conducted.

The law firm’s report pro-

files five senior staff members

of Virginia International Uni-

versity, based in Fairfax, Va.,

as well as nine people at the

Washington-based Rumi Fo-

rum, which says its mission is

“to foster intercultural dia-

logue” and is openly associ-

ated with Mr. Gulen. The re-

port also contains information

regarding two Turkish-Ameri-

can organizations and five

other individuals.

An individual formerly as-

sociated with VIU who was

named in the report declined

to comment. A senior VIU offi-

cial didn’t respond to a re-

quest to comment.

The Rumi Forum’s chief ex-

ecutive officer, Mustafa Akpi-

nar, said it was upsetting to

be included in the report, de-

spite his public association

with Mr. Gulen. Mr. Akpinar,

who said he is a U.S. citizen,

said he fears the added expo-

sure could mean that relatives

may be questioned and that

associates in Turkey may

avoid contact with him.

At the same time, Mr. Akpi-

nar said there is nothing nega-

tive in his background. “I have

nothing to hide,” he said.

“They are wasting Turkish peo-

ple’s money, taxpayers’ money.”

Another person profiled in

the report said he was no lon-

ger part of the Gulen move-

ment, having broken with the

group in 2017 because he was

unconvinced by Mr. Gulen’s de-

nials of involvement in the coup

attempt against Mr. Erdogan.

He said he was upset to learn

he was in the law firm’s report,

adding: “I am a U.S. citizen and

I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Mr. Gulen, a former Erdo-

gan ally, has been a legal resi-

dent of the U.S. since 2008.

FROM PAGE ONE

WASHINGTON—Turkey’s
government used a Washington
law firm to gather information
about its critics, including resi-
dents of the U.S., who it be-
lieved were allied with a move-
ment that President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan regards as a
central enemy, according to
documents reviewed by The
Wall Street Journal.
The information, gathered
at the behest of the Turkish
Embassy in Washington, was
transmitted to public prosecu-
tors in Turkey, according to
two Turkish government mem-
orandums marked “secret.”
Activists said they fear the
data is being used in investi-
gations of Mr. Erdogan’s per-
ceived adversaries.
The documents underscore
Ankara’s intense antipathy to-
ward individuals and groups it
sees associated with Fethullah
Gulen, a cleric who leads a
world-wide, moderate Islamic
movement from exile in rural
Pennsylvania.
Mr. Erdogan, who met with
President Trump at the White
House on Wednesday, said he
was presenting additional doc-
umentation to support Tur-
key’s demand that Mr. Gulen
be extradited to Turkey, accus-
ing the cleric of being behind

a 2016 coup attempt against

the president. U.S. officials

have said Ankara hasn’t pro-

vided sufficient proof of Mr.

Gulen’s involvement, and Mr.

Gulen denies having played

any role in the matter.

Since the coup attempt, more

than 600,000 investigations

have been opened by Turkey

into people considered members

of movements such as Mr. Gu-

len’s, the State Department said

earlier this year in its annual re-

port on human rights. More

than 80,000 people have been

imprisoned in conditions where

problems included “suspicious

deaths of persons in custody;

forced disappearances; torture”

and other rights concerns, the

State Department said.

Turkish diplomatic posts

world-wide are tasked with

gathering information on sus-

pected Gulenists, particularly in

Western Europe, where millions

of people of Turkish origin live,

said Aykan Erdemir, a former

opposition member in Turkey’s

parliament, now a senior fellow

at the Foundation for Defense

of Democracies think tank.

To gather information on

Mr. Gulen’s suspected follow-

ers in the U.S., the Turkish

Embassy in 2017 turned to a

Washington law firm, Saltz-

man & Evinch PLLC, which has

long represented Ankara’s in-

terests in the U.S.

The lengthy report the firm

compiled, drawn from public

databases, social media and

other open-source informa-

tion, was transmitted to Tur-

key’s Foreign and Justice min-

istries and from there to

public prosecutors in Ankara,

Istanbul and elsewhere in Tur-

key, the documents show.

In a secret Aug. 2, 2017,

memo transmitting the report

to Ankara’s chief public prose-

cutor, a senior official in Tur-

key’s Justice Ministry said:

“The attached examples are

presented in case they are

seen fit to be evaluated for in-

vestigations related to FETO,”

the Turkish government’s

name for the Gulen movement,

which it considers a terrorist

organization. The memo was

signed by a senior Justice

Ministry official.

Abdullah Bozkurt, a Turkish

journalist and Erdogan critic

who came across the docu-

ments, said in an email that

research by a monitoring in-

stitute he heads in Stockholm

showed that the information

gathered by the embassy had

already been “used in criminal

prosecutions against people

named in the report and it be-

came part of criminal evidence

in various case files.”

Mr. Bozkurt said he based

his assertions on other official

government documents he has

obtained and shared with the

Journal. The Journal couldn’t

determine which if any of the

Turkish investigations have

been based on the material

provided by the U.S. law firm.

The Turkish Embassy de-

clined to comment. The govern-

ment has repeatedly said Mr.

Gulen’s group is a threat to its

national security and involved

in illegal activities around the

world, including in the U.S.

David Saltzman, a principal

in Saltzman & Evinch, said in a

statement: “As is widely known,

we have represented the gov-

BYWARRENP.STROBEL

Turkey Gathered Information in the U.S. on Its Critics

The effort centered on alleged

backers of cleric Fethullah Gulen.

SASHA MASLOV FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

mobile-banking apps.

Google flirted with financial

services in the past. In 2011, it

launched Google Wallet, where

users could digitally store

their existing credit and debit

cards to make purchases. In

2015, it explored ways to use

email to pay bills.

Alphabet Inc., Google’s par-

ent company, has been trying

to boost usage of Google Pay,

which competes with similar

payment apps from Apple,

Samsung Electronics Co. and

Facebook, which this week in-

troduced its own payments

service across its apps.

Google Pay is on track to

have 100 million users world-

wide in 2020, up from 39 mil-

lion in 2018, according to esti-

mates from Juniper Research.

Apple Pay had about 140 mil-

lion users last year, according

to the research firm.

Banks are trying to figure

out when to work with tech

companies and when to com-

pete against them. Both Citi-

group and Stanford Federal

Credit Union, Google’s other

partner on the Cache project,

could bring in deposits and es-

tablish relationships with

younger, tech-savvy savers

who might one day need a

mortgage or credit card.

Anand Selva, who heads

Citigroup’s U.S. consumer

bank, said digital partnerships

like the one with Google would

let the bank grow beyond its

bricks-and-mortar network.

“We have to be where our cus-

tomers are,” he said.

Wall Street Journal. And
Google will leave the financial
plumbing and compliance to
the banks—activities it
couldn’t do without a license
anyway. “Our approach is go-
ing to be to partner deeply
with banks and the financial
system,” Google executive
Caesar Sengupta said in an in-
terview. “It may be the slightly
longer path, but it’s more sus-
tainable.”
Google is setting its sights
fairly low. Checking accounts
are a commoditized product,
and people don’t switch very
often. But they contain a trea-
sure trove of information, in-
cluding how much money peo-
ple make, where they shop and
what bills they pay.
The company will have to
convince a public that is in-
creasingly wary of how tech
companies are using personal
data that it can be trusted
with people's finances. Federal
regulators are examining
whether the user information
Google gets from its search
engine, home speakers, email
service and other apps gives
the company an unfair advan-
tage over competitors, the

Continued from Page One

Google

Eyes Push

In Finance

Journal has reported.

Mr. Sengupta said Google

wouldn’t sell checking-account

users’ financial data. Consum-

ers would access their check-

ing accounts through Google’s

digital wallet, Google Pay. The

company said it doesn’t use

Google Pay data for advertis-

ing purposes and doesn’t

share that data with advertis-

ers.

Fifty-eight percent of peo-

ple recently surveyed by con-

sulting firm McKinsey & Co.

said they would trust financial

products from Google. That

was better than Apple and

Facebook but worse than Ama-

zon.

“If we can help more people

do more stuff in a digital way

online, it’s good for the inter-

net and good for us,” Mr. Sen-

gupta said.

He said Google hadn’t de-

cided whether the checking

accounts would charge fees.

Banks sometimes charge fees

to some customers who carry

smaller balances or don’t use

their debit cards often.

Big banks already are facing

competition from technology

upstarts, especially among

millennial, mobile-first cus-

tomers. Money-transfer ser-

vices Venmo and Cash App are

rolling out debit cards. Chime

Financial Inc. and Revolut Ltd.

have scored billion-dollar val-

uations on the backs of their

$

Googleplanstooffer

checkingaccounts

fromCitigroupanda

smallCaliforniacredit

union.

Applehaspartnered

withGoldmanSachs

toissuecreditcards

foriPhoneuserson

theApplePayservice.

Uberoffersbank

accountswith special

perkstoitsdrivers

throughGreenDot,a

smallbank.

Somerecentcollaborations

betweenbigtechcompanies

andbanks

Percentageofconsumerswho

saidtheywouldtrusteach

companytohandletheir

finances

65%

58

56

35

Amazon

Google

Apple

Facebook

Numberofdigital-walletusers

39million

51

140

100

100

227

Google

Pay

Samsung

Pay

Apple

Pay

2018estimate

2020projection

TechMoney

Sources: the companies (partnerships); McKinsey & Co. (consumer trust); Juniper Research

estimates and projections (digital-wallet users)

DOYLE AUCTIONEERS & APPRAISERS NEW YORK

BEVERLY HILLS WASHINGTON, DC NORTH CAROLINA FLORIDA

MASSACHUSETTS CONNECTICUT PENNSYLVANIA NEW JERSEY CHICAGO

Auctions

@DOYLE.com

212-427-

Rolex

Daytona Cosmograph

Auction Nov 18

We invite you

to Auction

in New York!