Saudi imports from Turkey tumble in December after informal boycott | Reuters
The value of Saudi Arabia’s imports from Turkey in December dropped to their lowest level in at least a year, Saudi official data showed on Wednesday, on the back of an informal boycott by Saudi businessmen and retailers of Turkish products.
Political tensions spilled over into trade between the two regional powers last year after the kingdom’s biggest supermarket chains said they backed a boycott of Turkish imports that had been proposed by business leaders and Saudi social media influencers.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been at loggerheads since the 2011 uprisings across the Arab world when Riyadh accused Ankara of supporting Islamist political groups. Tensions escalated in 2018 over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.
Imports from Turkey amounted to 50.6 million riyals ($13.5 million) in December, down from 182.2 million riyals in November, and from 1.06 billion riyals in December 2019, according to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics.
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