President Erdogan of Turkey often asserts that ‘foreign powers’ (meaning the U.S.) want to bring him down. He says that the ‘interest lobby’ (meaning (Jewish) bankers), wants to damage Turkey. He is somewhat right on both points. Since last week the Turkish lira is on an extended down-slide. Today alone it lost nearly 20% of…
Donald Trump has just sent a dirty message to the president of Turkey. Why? What is the objective behind Trump’s statement? While Turkey is officially a member of NATO as well as a firm ally of the US, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been developing “friendly relations” with two of America’s staunchest enemies, namely Iran and…
Like the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey’s present financial collapse has been expected for years. The sloth of credit rating agencies and the laziness of bank credit committees allowed Turkey to struggle on a year or two longer than it should have, but the collapse of the Turkish lira this…
Turkey’s largely developed and currently growing economy contrasts sharply like that of Pakistan while the human development gap in Pakistan also remains high while in Turkey it is relatively low. However, from a perspective of handling various crises which have recently emerged, Turkey has been dealing with many of the same things Pakistan is either…
Strictly speaking, this is not the first time that Washington has imposed sanctions against Turkey. But the circumstances are entirely different, which makes the present crisis far more intractable. The US imposed an arms embargo on Turkey in 1975 followed the latter’s invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus. Ankara retaliated by shutting down all US…
This is something unheard of. A NATO country has imposed personal sanctions on senior officials of another member of the bloc! The White House has announced that the US Treasury Department is imposing sanctions on two Turkish officials, Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gul and Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu, because of what has happened to Andrew Craig…
