President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States of seeking to stab Turkey “in the back” over a diplomatic row sparked by the detention of an American pastor. “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 Ankara.
“We are together in NATO and then you seek to stab your strategic partner in the back. Can such a thing be accepted?” AFP quoted the president as saying. He added that Turkey was facing an “economic siege,” slamming the currency movements as an “attack against our country,” adding, however, that the dynamics of the Turkish economy are “solid, strong and sound and will continue to be so.”