When Turkish finance minister Nureddin Nebati this week announced plans to encourage households to convert their gold holdings into Turkish liras in a bid to shore up Turkish central bank reserves, he was targeting people like Esra G. 

Ms. G., whose last name has been abbreviated to preserve her anonymity, has had a life-long troubled relationship with gold. When she was barely three years old, her distaste for it as an adornment was already so strong that she dumped all her gold rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings into the Bosporus.

Turkish Gold Conversion Plan Likely To Falter On Lack Of Public Trust

Algeria may be the latest target in efforts to garner further Arab recognition of the Jewish state, despite its Gaza war conduct and rejection of Palestinian national aspirations.
To that end, a Philadelphia-based far-right pro-Israeli organisation, the Middle East Forum, has put Algeria in its crosshairs in an apparent attempt to build pressure on the North African state to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
Algeria would be a prize catch.


Is Algeria Next

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and  Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

Turkish Gold Conversion Plan Likely To Falter On Lack Of Public Trust

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