The upcoming Feb. 9 meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard-setting body for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), is of importance for Turkey.

Since February 2012, Turkey has been on a gray list “composed of countries with strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT regimes that have provided a high level political commitment to address these deficiencies through implementation of an action plan developed with the FATF.” While Turkey has been lobbying to get off the list, it looks like it will be staying on it.

Although Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been passionately arguing that psychological warfare is being waged against its policies in an attempt to embarrass the ruling party for aligning itself with radical Islamist groups fighting in Syria, the fact of the matter is that this argument has not come out of the blue. For example, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Nov. 13, “There is serious international propaganda against Turkey. And that perception has been established so much that it is now considered the reality.” 

Despite being accused of treason by the Erdogan government for its criticism of the AKP’s Syria policy, Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is firm in its assessment. “We like to remind you that it has been the AKP that gathered all the radical Islamists and settled them at the Turkey-Syria border,” CHP Deputy Chairman Erdogan Toprak said Sept. 22. “The ones who surrendered to terrorists the 900-kilometer-long Turkey-Syria borderline have no right to criticize the CHP.”