Turkiye Suspends All Trade With Israel in Surprise New Blow; Israel Threatens Retaliation
Last night, Bloomberg broke the story that Turkiye has suspended all trade with Israel. The Bloomberg account noted that Turkiye had announced the day before that it was joining South Africa in its genocide case against Israel.
A later Financial Times story provides official confirmation after Bloomberg cited “two high official” providing the scoop. From the Financial Times:
Turkey has halted trade with Israel as it again accused the country of stoking a “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza, marking the latest sign of deepening tensions between the two nations.
Ankara’s trade ministry late on Thursday said all export and import transactions related to Israel had been stopped and would not resume until the Jewish state “allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza”.
Ankara in April sanctioned exports in 54 important categories of goods but this latest move will disrupt bilateral trade worth more than $7bn a year. A
Even though Turkiye is depicting the move as temporary, it is conditioning the reversal on Israel allowing adequate humanitarian aid into Gaza, which no way, no how is going to happen. Israel has escalated from sniping Gazans running to get food and supplies from aid deliveries to leaving food-can-like explosives about that go boom on the attempt to open them:
Interestingly, this development is getting varying play in the media. It’s now the lead story at the BBC, but below the fold at the Financial Times and nowhere to be found at the Wall Street Journal. The Financial Times and the Twitterverse speculate that this move is due to Erdogan’s party having performed markedly worse in March elections than expected, and his inaction on Gaza was a big reason why…
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