The battle for Bank Asya

Turkey’s president has tried to kick of one of the country’s largest banks into touch, through public attacks and behind-the-scenes pressure. Despite becoming a political football, Bank Asya is still in the game. Can Turkey’s reputation in the west as a place to do business survive Erdogan’s continued, politically-motivated vendetta?

Gulen vs Erdogan
Gülen vs Erdogan

Just six years after the most devastating banking crisis since the Great Depression, a calamity that forced governments to spend trillions to rescue financial systems and save ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks, it’s surely inconceivable that a national leader should openly badmouth one of his country’s leading banks to bankruptcy.

Not in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.

For the last year, Erdogan and his long-ruling Justice and Development Party government have been conducting a bitter vendetta against Bank Asya, Turkey’s 12th biggest bank and its biggest Islamic ‘participation’ bank.

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