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?
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.