Erdogan: Turkish Banks Adopt Russia Payment System

Five Turkish banks have adopted Russia’s Mir payments system, a Bloomberg report said Saturday (Aug. 6), quoting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his talk with President Vladimir Putin at the Russian resort of Sochi.

The report said Erdogan spoke of serious developments on work the Turkish banks have been doing with Russia’s Mir card.

Erdogan also supported the Russian currency, as Turkey agreed to partial payment in rubles for Russian natural gas.

Turkey has said its war against Russia in Ukraine, but it has also not joined the US and Europe in leveling sanctions against Russia.

Turkey is also still importing energy from Russia, which provided a quarter of its crude oil imports and around 45% of its natural gas deliveries in 2021.

In addition, Russia has also given more foreign-exchange liquidity to Turkey, transferring billions of dollars to a Turkish subsidiary of Rosatom, the nuclear power company owned by the Russian state, to complete a nuclear power plant construction on the Mediterranean coast.

PYMNTS wrote recently that Turkey has been a bridge between continents most of the country is located on the Asian side of the continental divide, but companies there have worked more with Europe on business, and Turkey has leveraged tariff-free trade deals with the European Union and the UK

Read more: Turkish FinTechs See Growing Business Opportunities in Neighboring Europe

But that said, it also goes both ways.

Companies in Europe see Turkey as an opportunistic market to hire good engineers especially, said Hakan Gonca, founder and CEO of Turkish banking app Norma in an interview with PYMNTS. We have a good engineering education system [and] people in European markets are more aware of it than other places, [which is why] they have taken the steps to recruit from Turkey.