Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
In a rare public admission, former Turkish prime minister and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has provided one of the clearest first-hand accounts to date of how Ankara deliberately bypassed US sanctions on Iran, openly rejecting the embargo regime and constructing alternative financial channels that later spiraled into one of the largest sanctions-evasion cases ever prosecuted in the United States.
Speaking at length on the nationalist-leaning TiVi6 television station on January 14, Davutoğlu did not deny the core allegation that Turkey continued extensive economic relations with Iran despite mounting American pressure. On the contrary, he defended the policy as a deliberate and conscious choice made at the highest levels of the Turkish state. “We told the Americans very clearly that we did not consider the embargo on our neighbor Iran to be legitimate,” he said. “Turkey had energy needs, Turkey had economic interests, and we never saw it as acceptable to cut off a country with which we share one of the oldest borders in the world.”
Davutoğlu said this position was communicated directly to senior-level US officials. According to his account Washington was explicitly informed that Turkey would continue importing Iranian oil and gas and would not allow US sanctions to dictate its relations with Tehran. “When I was foreign minister, American officials responsible for sanctions came to my ministry,” he said. “We told them openly: We do not find this embargo right, and we will not comply with it at the expense of our national interests.”
As payment channels were progressively tightened by the US Treasury, Davutoğlu acknowledged that Turkey developed non-standard and unconventional mechanisms to keep trade flowing. He said difficulties in transferring funds led to what he described as “special arrangements” between the Turkish Central Bank and Iran’s counterpart. “When there were problems with transfers, we created certain special procedures between our central banks,” he said.
Those remarks closely align with what US prosecutors later described as the backbone of Iran’s sanctions-evasion scheme: the conversion of energy payments into gold and other non-dollar instruments, routed through Turkish financial institutions and falsely presented as legitimate trade. These mechanisms later became central evidence in criminal cases brought by the US Department of Justice.
Davutoğlu framed the policy as state-to-state commerce conducted in defiance of what Ankara considered illegitimate sanctions, but he conceded that it opened the door to systemic abuse. “Maintaining economic relations without recognizing the embargo is one thing,” he said. “Turning that into illegitimate money flows that implicate the Turkish state is something entirely different.”
Yet while he was in power as prime minister — and after having worked alongside President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for years — Davutoğlu did not voice any public criticism of these practices. On the contrary, he was part of a government that actively facilitated sanctions-evasion schemes, while officials at the finance and economy ministries continued to enable transactions with Iran through state-controlled channels.
It was only after Davutoğlu was forced out of office by Erdogan in 2016 and subsequently expelled from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that he repositioned himself as a critic. He went on to form a small opposition party, the Future Party (Gelecek Partisi), and began offering retrospective criticism of the Erdogan government’s handling of Iran-related sanctions and corruption scandals.
His recent revelations, delivered as an insider who occupied the highest offices of state for years, nonetheless confirm how Turkey helped defeat US sanctions through multiple schemes and even engineered special mechanisms to move money and continue purchasing Iranian oil and gas — thereby providing critical financial lifelines to Iran’s repressive clerical regime.
Although Davutoğlu was fully aware of the role played by Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who emerged as the central intermediary in the sanctions-evasion operation, he did not take concrete steps at the time to halt the illicit transactions or dismantle the network while it was operating.
Now in the opposition, Davutoğlu appears to be attempting to rewrite his own role, distancing himself from Zarrab and claiming that he repeatedly warned of the danger Zarrab posed. “I said it clearly: This man is a trickster,” he recalled. “Even if there were no other evidence, no one piles up cash and poses for photographs like that with clean money.”
Zarrab was arrested in Turkey in December 2013 after prosecutors filed indictments accusing him of multiple crimes, including bribery involving three cabinet ministers: Interior Minister Muammer Güler, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan and EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış. However, Erdogan intervened directly in the case, purged the prosecutors and senior police officials and ensured Zarrab’s release while effectively dismantling the criminal investigation against him and other suspects.
According to Davutoğlu he urged Erdogan to handle the Zarrab case domestically — largely to manage the political fallout and preserve appearances after the scandal became public — but Erdogan rejected his advice.
That warning proved prescient. Zarrab was arrested in the United States in 2016 and later became a cooperating witness, testifying in federal court that he had helped Iran move billions of dollars through Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank by bribing senior officials and falsifying trade records. Davutoğlu said the moment Zarrab turned state witness marked a decisive turning point. “I said openly: if you do not try him here, he will go to New York and testify. That is exactly what happened,” he said.
The fallout extended to Halkbank itself and to senior executives, including former deputy general manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was convicted in New York of helping Iran evade sanctions and served a prison sentence before returning to Turkey. Davutoğlu emphasized that US authorities do not abandon such cases. “Americans do not close these files,” he said. “They keep them on the shelf. When the time comes, they take them down again.”
Throughout the interview Davutoğlu returned repeatedly to the same core argument: Turkey’s refusal to recognize US sanctions was a political choice, but the absence of legal boundaries and accountability allowed corruption to flourish under political protection. “We did not accept the embargo, yes,” he said. “But what followed was something else entirely. People exploited this position and dragged Turkey into illegitimate networks.”
He warned that the same pattern could repeat itself if lessons were not learned, pointing to later dealings with Venezuela and other sanctioned states. He cautioned that another Reza Zarrab-style scandal could emerge, once again leaving foreign courts — not Turkish institutions — to judge Turkey’s actions.
Taken together, Davutoğlu’s remarks amount to rare insider confirmation that Turkey not only resisted US sanctions on Iran but actively engineered ways around them — and then failed to prevent those mechanisms from being transformed into a vast corruption and money-laundering operation whose legal and political consequences are still unfolding in US courts.
In the same interview Davutoğlu also addressed the recent wave of unrest and protests in Iran, voicing opposition to any US intervention. He endorsed Erdogan’s wait-and-see posture, arguing that Ankara should avoid inflammatory rhetoric or alignment with external powers seeking to exploit the turmoil. “Our relations with Iran have never been determined by the wishes of a third actor,” he said, underscoring that the two countries share one of the world’s oldest continuous borders.
Davutoğlu was unequivocal in rejecting any US military or coercive intervention in Iran, describing Washington’s approach — particularly under former president Donald Trump — as unpredictable and dangerous. He accused the United States of applying double standards on human rights, pointing to police violence and protest crackdowns within the US itself. “When protesters are killed in Minneapolis, who intervenes in the United States?” he asked, questioning Washington’s moral authority to dictate outcomes in Iran.
For Turkey, Davutoğlu identified a firm red line: No Turkish territory or military bases should ever be used for an attack on Iran. “If any government were to allow US bases in Turkey to be used against Iran, it would be the greatest mistake in the history of the republic,” he said, adding that such an action would lack any legal basis under international law, including the absence of a United Nations Security Council mandate.
