Erdogan announces boycott of US electronics

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country will boycott United States electronic goods amid a diplomatic spat that has triggered a currency crisis.

Showing no signs of backing down in a stand-off with the US, Mr Erdogan suggested that Turkey would stop procuring US-made iPhones and would buy Korean Samsung or Turkish-made Vestel smartphones instead.

He said: “If they have the iPhone, there is Samsung elsewhere. We have Vestel.”

The worsening dispute comes just a month after the Nato summit, where two of the alliance’s biggest powers came together in a show of unity.

The dispute started over the arrest of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was jailed nearly two years ago in the crackdown after a failed coup in Turkey. US President Donald Trump widened the rift with a hostile tweet that announced a doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminium, concluded with the line “our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”

Mr Erdogan renewed a call for Turks to convert their dollars into lira, to strengthen the currency after it nosedived this week over concerns about the president’s economic policies and over US sanctions.

The US took the step over the continued detention of Mr Brunson, who has been moved from prison to house arrest.

Behind the scenes, however, diplomatic dialogue appears to have resumed. Turkey’s staterun news agency and US officials said US National Security Adviser John Bolton had met with the Turkish ambassador to Washington on Monday.

That helped to ease tensions in financial markets, with the Turkish lira stabilising somewhat near record lows. It was up 5 per cent on Tuesday, at 6.55 to the dollar, having fallen 42 per cent this year, with most of those losses in recent weeks.

Investors are worried not only about Turkey’s souring relations with the US, a long-time Nato ally, but also Mr Erdogan’s economic policies and the country’s high debt accumulated in foreign currencies.

Independent economists say Mr Erdogan should let the central bank raise interest rates to support the currency, but he wants low rates to keep the economic growth going.

Yesterday, the industrialists’ group Tusiad and the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges called for a rise in interest rates.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said Finance Minister Berat Albayrak would address foreign investors tomorrow.