The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Friday issued a travel advisory for Turks intending to visit the United States, warning them against increasing terrorist acts in the country and the arbitrary arrest of Turkish citizens, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The move came two days after the US State Department updated its travel advisory for Americans seeking to visit Turkey, citing it as a country with “increased security risk.”
The Turkish advisory, published on the ministry’s official website, said: “It has been observed that there have been increasing cases of terrorism and violent acts in the United States.”
The ministry mentioned recent attacks on the campus of Ohio State University and at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Minnesota and the First Baptist Church in Texas.
It added that the recent New York City subway pipe bomb terrorist attack was “an example of far-right/racist incidents.”
The ministry also cited what it called the “arbitrary arrest” of Turkish citizens, including public servants travelling to the US on official business.
The US State Department on Jan. 10 issued a revised travel advisory for Americans intending to visit Turkey, urging them to reconsider such travel due to terrorism and arbitrary arrests.
The new travel advisories posted on the State Department website list countries under four tiered categories to warn travelers of potential dangers overseas. The third category — in which Turkey is included along with Pakistan, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia and Guatemala — urges US citizens to reconsider traveling to these countries.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned Philip Kosnett, the chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Ankara, yesterday to voice its anger over the categorization of Turkey as a country with an “increased security risk” along with Sudan, Pakistan and Guatemala.
“We have expressed our disturbance with the inaccurate information posted in this travel advice,” a senior Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News.