Trump udara bez bombi i aviona. I to zestoko.

Za 14, ovaj 1% je zbog Alaha.

Lindsey Graham
‏Verified account @LindseyGrahamSC
2h2 hours ago

Lindsey Graham Retweeted Donald J. Trump

I hate it came to this point, but President @realDonaldTrump really had no other choice.

#Turkey

Najsmiješnije u svemu ovome je što će Erdoganova sranja ispravljati njegov zet, ministar financija. Muslimani ne znaju bez tog obiteljskog cirkusa. Kao obitelj sultana Izetbegovića.

Turkey’s perfect storm
Don’t blame Trump. The current crisis is the culmination of Erdoğan’s reckless stewardship.

By AYKAN ERDEMIR 8/11/18, 12:39 PM CET Updated 8/11/18, 1:02 PM CET

WASHINGTON — Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power on the heels of the 2001 financial crisis that ended entire political careers. Following Friday’s meltdown in the Turkish economy, a day Turks are already hailing as “Black Friday,” many are left wondering whether Erdoğan will also fall from power.

The Turkish strongman, who has been engaged in a protracted diplomatic spat with the U.S. and various EU countries, now blames Turkey’s woes on an “economic war” waged by outside forces. But Turks are not buying it.

When it comes to Turkey’s economic woes, the government only has itself to blame.

Turkey’s economy has been overheating for some time. The global liquidity glut in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis has allowed emerging markets such as Turkey to access cheap capital, leading to private sector overleveraging. Turkey’s non-financial companies have borrowed over $340 billion in foreign liabilities.

Now that the U.S. Federal Reserve is tapering its release of cheap money, emerging markets are feeling the dollar liquidity squeeze. Turkish companies are having difficulty servicing their foreign-currency debt. And with the Turkish lira losing 44 percent of its value against the dollar this year, many businesses are rushing to banks to restructure their loans. Indeed, the crisis is spilling over to the financial sector. So much so that the European Central Bank now warns of exposure of EU banks to Turkey, which exceeds $166 billion.

The Turkish economy may have reached the point of no return.

Faced with a looming economic crisis, Erdoğan over the past couple of years has chosen to use his expanded powers to punish his domestic enemies and challenge his Western allies instead of focusing on much-needed structural reform.

Since Turkey’s failed coup attempt in July 2016, Ankara has jailed lawmakers, journalists, academics, and civil servants. The Erdoğan government has seized assets worth $11 billion, too, to the concern of investors worldwide.

Meanwhile, Ankara has also jailed over 50 Western nationals, residents and employees on dubious political charges, as part of Erdoğan’s ill-contrived policy of “hostage diplomacy,” which is aimed at extracting concessions from Turkey’s Western allies. The tactic of using innocent detainees as bargaining chips — a policy borrowed from Tehran and Pyongyang’s playbooks — has not only tarnished Turkey’s global image, but also triggered the worst crisis between Washington and Ankara since the former’s 42-month-long military embargo between 1975 and 1978. Again, investors took note.

When Turkish authorities in 2016 detained Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina pastor who has served peacefully for over two decades in Turkey, no one could have guessed that his case could precipitate a diplomatic crisis or hasten Turkey’s economic meltdown. U.S. efforts to free Pastor Brunson — by all accounts an innocent man held on farcical charges of espionage, terrorism, and coup plotting — not only met stiff resistance from Erdoğan, but also triggered anti-American rhetoric from his top officials.

With the Turkish lira losing 44 percent of its value against the dollar this year, many businesses are rushing to banks to restructure their loans | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

With politicians on the other side of the Atlantic consumed by one of the most polarized periods in U.S. history, Erdoğan achieved the impossible: He succeeded in uniting Republicans and Democrats, as Congress and the White House introduced a barrage of punitive measures against Ankara. In addition to congressional bills aiming to block Turkey’s access to international financial institutions and purchase of F-35 stealth fighters, Trump sanctioned two Turkish ministers while also doubling tariffs against Turkish steel and aluminum.

And as the diplomatic spat stirred up even more turbulence in Turkish markets, Erdoğan chose to double down. He defied Washington’s pressure, saying “if they have their dollars, we have our Allah.” His son-in-law, the newly minted minister of treasury and finance, on Friday announced his long-anticipated “new economic plan” — an amateur slideshow that failed to assuage investor concerns and led to a further plunge in the Turkish currency. By the time he ended his one-hour talk, the lira lost almost 8 percent. Turkey closed the day with the biggest one-day devaluation since the 2001 crisis that brought Erdoğan to power.

The Turkish economy may have reached the point of no return. Even if Erdoğan takes a U-turn and releases American hostages in Turkish prisons, he can put neither bilateral relations with Washington nor the Turkish economy back on track. From helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions in a massive scheme that implicated some of his top officials to turning a blind eye to jihadists on Turkey’s border with Syria, Erdoğan has caused irreparable damage on Turkey’s reputation among investors, not to mention its diplomatic relations.

His threat to “start looking for new friends and allies” and his overtures to Russia signal a pivot away from the transatlantic alliance and its values, and will only serve to exacerbate Turkey’s diplomatic and economic woes.

Turkey’s toothless opposition fails to provide much hope

The current crisis is the culmination of Erdoğan’s reckless stewardship. Fixing it will take years — a task that will require new leadership and an entirely different mentality.

Turkey’s toothless opposition, however, fails to provide much hope. Without strong political forces to push him out, Erdoğan will almost certainly continue to dig himself and the Turkish economy into a deeper hole.

Erdogan’s Hostage Diplomacy: Western Nationals in Turkish Prisons

Aykan Erdemir, Eric S. Edelman

Introduction:

At least two American citizens are currently sitting in Turkish prisons, where they have been held for the last two years. One is Andrew Brunson, a pastor from North Carolina who ministered to a small Protestant congregation in Turkey for over 20 years until his arrest by the authorities in the fall of 2016. The other is Serkan Golge, a Turkish-American physicist who worked for NASA’s Mars program until the Turkish police picked him up while on vacation in Turkey, also in 2016. Both men stand accused of plotting or partaking in a failed coup attempt that transpired that July against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled the country for 15 years – increasingly with an iron fist.

Turkish prosecutors charged both U.S. citizens with “membership in a terrorist organization.” Golge received a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February 2018 for his involvement with the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO), a group Turkey designated and accused of planning the July 2016 putsch. The term “FETO” was first used in 2015 to refer to the followers of U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, Erdogan’s closest political ally between 2002 and 2013, who later turned into his sworn enemy following the Gulen network’s role in exposing and publicizing the massive corruption scandal that threatened Erdogan’s government in December 2013. Prosecutors have charged Brunson not only with membership in FETO, but also in a group that is one of Gulen’s archrivals, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist Kurdish insurgency group seeking self-rule in Turkey.

Ankara sees both groups as top national security threats, and has repeatedly branded and jailed dissidents across the political spectrum by accusing them of membership in these organizations. The two Americans are among some 100,000 people detained in Turkey after Erdogan declared a “state of emergency” following the failed coup. Since then, the Turkish president has ruled the country by decree. By the end of the summer of 2016, 150,000 people were dismissed from their jobs. Blatantly targeting Turkey’s secular and liberal opposition alongside the supposed coup-suspects, the dismissals amounted to no less than a mass political purge.

Brunson and Golge were not the only foreign nationals ensnared in these purges. Not only did authorities begin to target Western human rights advocates – an attempt to intimidate Turkish dissidents who collaborate with foreign colleagues – but Turkey’s pro-government media also launched a slander campaign against Europeans and Americans, accusing them of supporting terrorism and conspiring coups to make them into targets for the mass crackdown. With Gulen’s residence in the United States and Washington’s partnership with Syrian Kurds fueling state-propagated anti-Americanism throughout Turkey, Americans came under particular scrutiny.

But other Western nationals experienced similar pressures. More than 30 Western nationals have been jailed in Turkey following the coup attempt, and at least nine remain in prison as of June 1, 2018.3 Under the state of emergency, they could be legally held up to seven years in pre-trial detention, with limited access to legal or consular support, and are not entitled to attorney-client privilege. Pastor Brunson, for one, has had no due process in his case, with authorities even withholding his indictment for 17 months – based on the testimony of secret witnesses – and keeping him in a maximum-security prison. His lawyer claims he has lost 50 pounds since his arrest.

Increasingly, another aspect of these mass arrests has emerged: Since last summer, American and European officials have on several occasions condemned Turkey’s “hostage diplomacy” – efforts by the Turkish government to make political bargaining chips out of Western prisoners arrested in Turkey since the coup.4 Following the arbitrary detention of Western nationals in Turkey, they argue, the government uses the prisoners as pawns to extract concessions in bilateral relations with the U.S. and EU countries. As one Freedom House analyst observed, “Turkey’s new foreign policy is hostage-taking.”5 Indeed, as President Erdogan turned increasingly autocratic at home, Turkey’s international reputation and relations with its traditional transatlantic partners have also frayed.

This hostage diplomacy is not only hurting Turkey’s global standing, but also propelling its transatlantic partners to consider sanctions against Ankara. Germany and the United States have issued several travel warnings to their citizens, advising against visiting Turkey. Business communities and investors across Europe fear Turkey’s repressive climate and lack of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Turkey’s relations with the Netherlands unraveled in March 2017, after a diplomatic row ahead of the Dutch elections. While the main reason for the breakdown was Erdogan’s incitement of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands, the deportations and detentions of dozens of Dutch citizens in Turkey did not help.

The harshest denunciations of Ankara’s hostage diplomacy, however, have come from the United States Congress, where members have issued multiple calls for imposing sanctions against Turkish officials involved in the wrongful arrests of American citizens. The arrest of Brunson on dubious charges, in particular, has animated Washington, where Congress has held numerous panels and hearings on the pastor’s Kafkaesque case and the conditions of his confinement. Meanwhile, authorities have arrested at least three Turkish employees of U.S. consular missions in Turkey, prompting a visa crisis between the NATO allies in late October 2017. While the crisis was ostensibly resolved by December the same year, all three employees remain in prison or under house arrest.

The United States and various European Union countries have so far dealt with Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy at the bilateral level, using discreet talks with Ankara to plead for the release of their nationals and employees. The Turkish president has chosen to bargain with each country according to his calendar, using his hostages as leverage to gain concessions. The U.S. and the EU need a coherent, transatlantic strategy to counter Erdogan’s hostage diplomacy, not only to ensure the release of Western nationals in prison, but also to prevent other incidents in the future.

A da je Turska uistinu postala autoritarna zemlja potvrđuje informacija koju prenosi AFP da se na lokalnim televizijama pitanje kraha lire gotovo uopće ne spominje

Da bi se dobila slika kakvo je "tursko gospodarstveno čudo" bilo zadnjih godina, i taj "rast", malo podataka.

- Velika firma u vlasništvu jendog tajkuna (garderoba, kolači/keksi, ostalo) nedavno napravila dogovor sa svojim kreditorima da refinancira astronomskih $7 milijardi duga stranim i domaćim bankama.
...