To the long list of people and countries that Donald Trump has annoyed, the people of Turkey now add their number. The Donald seems to be pissing off everyone in the world right now (except perhaps totalitarian regimes such as those of Jim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin). Thanks to his economic policies; his steel and aluminum tariffs in particular, former allies have recently turned foes. It would seem that Donald Trump isn’t even good at the one thing he is supposed to be good at – doing business!
President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his country would boycott American electronics; particularly Apple products in response to the sanctions that the western nation has imposed upon Turkey. This, in spite of the fact that Erdogan has shown himself to be a regular Apple user. The sanctions were supposed to be in retaliation to the detention of an American pastor on terror related charges.
Turkish Airlines and the country’s major telecom operator tweeted with the #ABDyeReklamVerme hashtag; which means “don’t give advertisements to the USA”.
Trouble had been brewing between the two counties for a while and the lira had steadily been conceding ground to the dollar. The final straw seemed to be the tweet issued by Donald Trump last Friday: which announced that America would be doubling steel and aluminum tariffs for Turkey.
So clearly, Trump is not popular in Turkey. He has managed to piss off a totalitarian leader such as Erdogan as well as the Turkish people who are otherwise known to like American goods – good going!
The anti-American protest has gathered a lot of momentum in Turkey. Suddenly electronics brands such as Samsung as well as Turkish brands such as Venus and Vestel seem to have become more popular in that part of the world.
This was the Turkish ‘answer to #SiliconValley’ – destruction of iPhones using rocks and stones hammers and fire…apparently anything goes!
In this macabre looking hostage style video, this guy lines up what we presume to be several iPhones and then proceeds to smash them using a sledgehammer.
This one simply decided to put a bullet through it! This seems to be proper and fitting, in view of the deep and abiding love that Americans have for their guns.
This woman's protest is a little less violent – it is against American coffee. She says she will never drink American coffee. With Turkey’s abiding love for drinking coffee as a social and culinary activity, perhaps this will hurt more?
My fave TV show host explains the issue of trade sanctions, tariffs and the recent escalations created by Trump. Watch this video to decide for yourself whether the man really is as clueless as all that; whether Americans really are living in an "Idiocracy" as one of the comments below the video suggested.
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