February 12, 2014 | Quote
Turkey Laws on Terror Financing Under Scrutiny at Paris Meetings
Turkish efforts to tighten laws to block financing for terrorist groups will be in the spotlight at meetings in Paris starting today, amid U.S. concerns that funds are moving through Turkey to al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria.
The Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, meets today through Feb. 14 to review global compliance. FATF urged Turkey on Oct. 18 to take further steps to identify and freeze terrorist assets and criminalize terrorist financing.
The meeting comes after the U.S. Treasury said that “funding and foreign fighters” were moving through Turkey to support al-Qaeda affiliates fighting alongside the government in Syria’s civil war. The FATF decided not to suspend membership of Turkey last February after the country passed legislation against terrorist financing, which the U.S. ambassador said was inadequate. Turkey is on the FATF’s so-called gray list of “high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions,” along with 10 other countries including Algeria, Indonesia and Yemen.
“Turkey’s terrorism finance problem is growing but has not reached the blatantly rogue state levels of” Iran and North Korea, the only two blacklisted countries, Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury, said in an e-mail Feb. 10. “FATF is likely to keep Turkey on a gray list, which means that it is going to be identified as problematic, but not in outright violation,” said Schanzer, who’s now vice president of research at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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“The FATF will judge whether Turkey meets criteria or not. They will likely ignore al-Qadi, Syrian jihadis, Hamas, Iran, etc.,” Schanzer said. “The FATF process has nothing to do with current headlines. Only Turkey’s laws.”