Turkish and Israeli businessmen are circumventing the sanctions imposed by the Turkish president by using Palestinian intermediaries.
The news comes three months after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan imposed a trade embargo on the Jewish state in the wake of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
According to the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), which represents more than 95,000 exporters in the Anatolian nation, imports by “Palestine” from Turkey shot up by 1,180% in July, Israeli financial daily Globes reported.
Palestinian imports from Turkey amounted to nearly $120 million in July, compared to $9 million in the same month last year, the article said. The goods, however, nearly all go to Israeli importers.
Palestinian businessmen are charging commissions of 5% to 8% of the value of the transactions, with the Turkish exporters recording the imports in their names.
“Confounding Erdoğan’s decision on cutting trade ties with Israel, money, like water, doesn’t recognize walls and finds its way of percolating through,” Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, an expert on Turkey at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, and the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, told Globes.
“These figures leave no room for doubt that Turkish and Israeli businesspeople found a way of circumventing the sanctions imposed by the Turkish president,” he said.
Last month, the Turkish president threatened to attack Israel.
