[Nordic Monitor, 4 Nov 25] A US-indicted Turkish defense contractor and former military officer, whose rapid rise in Turkey’s arms industry was fueled by close ties to the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has managed to escape US federal bribery charges following what many observers believe was political lobbying in Washington by Ankara.The case, which accused him of manipulating NATO contracts in exchange for secret payments, was quietly dropped on July 9 by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) just days after a high-level meeting between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump during a NATO summit in The Hague held June 24-25.
The saga of Ismail Terlemez, once a technical insider at NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), exposes how political influence and geopolitical bargaining can upend international corruption investigations and how a Turkish operative accused of bribery inside NATO’s most sensitive procurement system emerged instead as one of Turkey’s fastest-growing arms exporters. La Lettre, Le Soir, Knack and Follow the Money were first to publish on this.
The US indictment, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, accused Terlemez of accepting €115,896.74 in bribes from Scott Everett Willason, an American defense consultant. Prosecutors alleged that the two colluded between 2019 and 2020 to rig NATO tenders, including contracts for the US Army’s TNT supplies, by exploiting Terlemez’s insider position at the Ammunition Support Partnership, the NATO division responsible for collective arms purchases....