US feud deflects blame for Turkey’s woes

ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting a bitter row with the United States to pin the blame for Turkey’s increasingly acute economic troubles on an external enemy rather than problems at home, analysts say.

Analysts had warned over recent months that pent-up imbalances meant Turkey’s economy was headed for choppy waters, even before sanctions announced by President Donald Trump sparked a precipitous fall in the value of the lira.

But the Trump administration’s measures have allowed Erdogan to lump those issues together with the lira’s plunge and place them firmly at the door of the White House, playing on an anti-Americanism that is present in all sections of Turkish society.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute, said Erdogan’s control over the Turkish media — a grip tightened after recent ownership changes — allowed the authorities to easily paint the United States as the villain.

“I think Erdogan has decided that while he did not want this crisis with the US to come to where it is, he is also going to use it,” he told AFP.

“Erdogan can shape the narrative domestically because he controls 90 percent of the media.

“He can now connect the economic crisis in Turkey, which is a result of his policies, to US sanctions solely.”

Well before Trump pushed the lira off the edge of a cliff on August 10 with a tweet that announced a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs on Turkey, clouds had been gathering over the Turkish economy as inflation raced to almost 16 percent and the current account deficit widened.

Erdogan had also undermined confidence in the currency with repeated statements regarded as baffling by some market players.

He called interest rates the “mother and father of all evil” and said low interest rates were needed to bring inflation down.

And one month after winning a new mandate in elections, Erdogan stunned observers by naming his son-in-law Berat Albayrak, a former energy minister without financial market experience, to head a newly expanded finance ministry.

But once Trump triggered the crisis over the detention by Turkish authorities of US pastor Andrew Brunson, Erdogan was quick to denounce a “plot” that aimed to bring Turkey “to its knees”.

Meanwhile, pro-government media lined up to denounce what they termed an “economic coup”, comparing events to the failed putsch that sought to oust Erdogan in 2016.

Sinan Ulgen, president of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy (Edam), said Erdogan’s strategy was “essentially to consolidate popular support at a time of economic crisis” by “minimising” the government’s responsibility.

And Erdogan’s rhetoric finds considerable echo throughout Turkish society, which has long been marked by a strong anti-American sentiment which only intensified after the failed putsch.