The popular campaign boycotting Turkish products in Saudi Arabia has gained further momentum over the past few days, attracting the support of commentators and businesses. The unofficial embargo imposed by Riyadh on Turkish goods is undermining Turkey’s exports not only to the kingdom and but also to other Gulf and Arab countries.
For more than a year, a number of Saudi and Turkish traders have stressed that Saudi Arabia has been enforcing an informal boycott of imports from Turkey. In October Saudi authorities started calling on their citizens to “boycott everything Turkish” following a statement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accusing some Gulf countries of pursuing policies that were destabilizing the region. The Saudi move seems to have been followed by unofficial boycott campaigns in other Arab countries.
Similarly, the exports of Turkish goods to Gulf and other Arab countries decreased in the January-August 2020 period compared to the same period last year, TİM figures revealed.
Turkey’s exports to the United Arab Emirates (-16.92 percent), Bahrain (-17.71 percent), Kuwait (-4.18 percent), Algeria (-29.26 percent), Morocco (-13.68 percent), Iraq (-7.29 percent), Lebanon (-36.06 percent), Egypt (-11.89 percent) and Jordan (-10.89 percent) showed a marked decrease in 2020 over the previous year.
While some of the decline can be attributed to the pandemic, TİM statistics show that the Saudi boycott campaign might result in a sharp decline of Turkish exports to Arab countries.
Last week Turkey’s leading business groups and associations urged Saudi Arabia to take action as Turkish firms are encountering growing problems in the kingdom. “This issue has gone beyond bilateral economic relations and become a problem for global supply chains,” said the joint statement that was signed by industry leaders, exporters, contractors and unions.
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