TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Erdogan accuses US of seeking to stab Turkey 'in the back'
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the United States of seeking to stab Turkey "in the back" over a diplomatic row sparked by the detention of an American pastor that has sent the lira into a tailspin.
Change Size
This combination of file pictures created on August 11, 2018 shows (left)President of Turkey and Leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdogan deliverling a speech during an AK party's group meeting at the AK Party's headquarters in Ankara, on January 26, 2018.(right) US President Donald Trump looking on during a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, July 30, 2018. (Agence France Presse/Adem Saltan/Saul Loeb)
P
resident Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the United States of seeking to stab Turkey "in the back" over a diplomatic row sparked by the detention of an American pastor that has sent the lira into a tailspin.
"You act on one side as a strategic partner but on the other you fire bullets into the foot of your strategic partner," Erdogan told a conference in the capital Ankara.
"We are together in NATO and then you seek to stab your strategic partner in the back. Can such a thing be accepted?" Erdogan asked.
Turkey and the United States, two NATO allies, have been locked in bitter disputes over a string of issues from a pastor's detention on terror charges to the war in Syria.
The dispute has severely hit the Turkish currency which has been in the free fall since Friday.
Erdogan said Turkey was facing an "economic siege", slamming the currency movements as an "attack against our country."
US President Donald Trump said Friday he had doubled steel and aluminium tariffs on Turkey.
But Erdogan advised Turks not to worry.
"It is not at all like we sank and we are finished. The dynamics of the Turkish economy are solid, strong and sound and will continue to be so."
Erdogan also blasted the "economic terror" on social media, vowing that the judiciary had taken necessary measures to punish so-called speculators.
The Interior Ministry launched an investigation into 346 social media accounts on grounds of "provocative sharings on social media", the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
