ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses 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 tells a conference today 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 asks.
Turkey and the US, 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 free fall since Friday.
But Erdogan advises 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 blasts the “economic terror” on social media, vowing that the judiciary had taken necessary measures to punish so-called speculators.
— AFP
In this file photo taken on July 15, 2018, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech at a ceremony marking the second anniversary of the attempted coup at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey. (AFP Photo/Adem Altan)
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