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Posts tagged ‘Recep Tayyip Erdogan’

Turkey’s Currency Plummets After Trump Sanctions Hit for Jailing American Pastor


Reported By Hanna Bogorowski | August 7, 2018 at 9:37am

Turkish currency, the lira, hit a record low Monday after efforts by the country’s central bank to curb the drop by reducing the amount of foreign currency it holds in its reserves and their efforts to bolster the banking sector failed.

The currency has fallen nearly 30 percent this year already and is currently down 3.8 percent against the U.S. dollar, with $1 buying about 5.277 lira, according to The Wall Street Journal.

After months of decline, the lira fell 2.2 points on Sunday after policymakers in Turkey announced adjustments to the reserve policies of the central bank — CBRT — that were supposed to result in giving the banking sector $2.2 billion in liquidity.

The CBRT claimed it would do this by lowering the “upper limit for the FX maintenance facility within the reserve options mechanism” by 5 percentage points to 40 percent, per a statement on its website.

This helped temporarily, the Financial Times reported, but the lira continued to fall.

Recent actions by the CBRT have alarmed investors who are increasingly concerned by the amount of control Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds over monetary policy, The Wall Street Journal said.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office announced Friday that it would be looking into Turkey’s duty-free access to the U.S. market, which came after Turkey hit the U.S. with tariffs on U.S. goods in response to American tariffs on steel and aluminum.

U.S. President Donald Trump also hit Turkey with sanctions on Wednesday over the country’s bogus detainment of an American pastor.

“Pastor Brunson’s unjust detention and continued prosecution by Turkish officials is simply unacceptable,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

“President Trump has made it abundantly clear that the United States expects Turkey to release him immediately,” Mnuchin added.

Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu were the targets of the sanctions because they played a large role in imprisoning Brunson and “serve as leaders of Turkish government organizations responsible for implementing Turkey’s serious human rights abuse,” the statement reads.

Improving relations with the U.S. and raising interest rates, two things Turkey has so far declined to do, would help stabilize the country’s currency, analysts told The Wall Street Journal.

Turkey’s inflation rate also hit a 14-year high in June, reaching 15.39 percent.

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International Politics

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State Department Rejects Erdogan’s Plan For Releasing American Pastor Jailed On Bogus Charges [VIDEO]


Reported by Photo of Chuck Ross Chuck Ross | Reporter | 12:12 AM 09/29/2017

 

The State Department poured cold water on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proposal to swap an American pastor jailed in his country for Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in exile in the U.S.

“I can’t imagine that we would go down that road,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said during a press briefing on Thursday.

Nauert was responding to a question about Erdogan’s surprise admission earlier in the day that his government would release Pastor Andrew Brunson from jail if the U.S. extradited Gulen, his main political foe. (RELATED: Erdogan Admits Using Jailed American Pastor As Bargaining Chip Against U.S.)

“The U.S. wants a pastor from us. You have a pastor of your own; you give him to us, then we return pastor to you,” Erdogan told a group of police officers at the presidential palace in Ankara on Thursday.

 

Erdogan accuses Gulen, his former ally, of masterminding last July’s failed coup attempt. He has pleaded with Presidents Trump and Obama to extradite Gulen, who lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania. The U.S. government has so far rebuffed the requests.

Brunson, a North Carolina native, has been in jail on bogus terrorism charges since Oct. 7. He was initially arrested along with his wife, though she has since been released. Turkish authorities have not laid out a case against Brunson, who has been accused in Turkish media of being a follower of Gulen, a sympathizer of Kurdish radicals, and a CIA operative. Gulen’s network of followers and the Kurdish separatist group PKK are both considered terrorist groups in Turkey.

“We continue to advocate for his release. He was wrongfully imprisoned in Turkey, and we’d like to see him brought home,” Nauert said Thursday.

 

Nauert said that U.S. diplomats have stayed in touch with Brunson, who operated a small Christian church in the coastal city of Izmir. She revealed that Brunson was last visited on Sept. 18.

“This is a very serious issue for us trying to get Pastor Brunson to home. This is a subject that President Trump had raised with President Erdogan not too terribly too long ago,” said Nauert.

Trump and Sec. of State Rex Tillerson have both pressed Erdogan to release Brunson. Erdogan brought up the issue with Trump during a meeting last week. Erdogan was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Nauert said she had no updates to offer on the extradition request for Gulen. Despite Erdogan’s lobbying of his American counterparts, Trump and Obama, the process of removing the cleric would go through the federal court system. The Justice Department, which would handle any extradition move, has refused to comment on Gulen.

WATCH:

https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4684025

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