{"id":47290,"date":"2011-12-05T15:08:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T13:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=47290"},"modified":"2014-01-06T22:52:19","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T20:52:19","slug":"suspending-free-trade-pact-harms-syrians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/12\/05\/suspending-free-trade-pact-harms-syrians\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspending free trade pact harms Syrians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-47293\" title=\"25515_main\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/25515_main.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/25515_main.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/25515_main-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Syrian economy, hit hard by five months of anti-government protests, could survive unrest and sanctions into next year but experts and officials warn of a sharp deterioration afterwards. AFP PHOTO\/JOSEPH EID<\/p>\n<p>ISTANBUL: Syria is punishing its own people by suspending a free trade agreement with Turkey in retaliation for Turkish sanctions against the Damascus regime, the Turkish economy minister said Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>By cutting off bilateral trade, \u201cthe Syrian government punishes its own people, industrialists &#8230; and entrepreneurs,\u201d Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said in a statement carried by the state-run Anatolia news agency.<\/p>\n<p>Damascus decided last week to suspend the 2004 trade pact after Turkey, one of Syria\u2019s closest economic partners, followed in the footsteps of the Arab League in announcing a series of sanctions on the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad for its months-long crackdown on anti-regime protesters that has claimed more than 4,000 lives according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n<p>Among the measures, Ankara froze trade and severed links between the two countries\u2019 central banks.<\/p>\n<p>Turkey has a trade surplus with Syria, exporting goods worth a total of $1.8 billion (1.3 billion euros) to its neighbor in 2010, while imports from Syria were $663 million, accounting for only 0.3 percent of Turkey\u2019s total imports, Caglayan said.<\/p>\n<p>However, 10.6 percent of Syria\u2019s total imports are from Turkey, he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuspending the agreement syria will expose Syria to more problems, as it already suffers from procurement issues,\u201d Caglayan said.<\/p>\n<p>A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on December 05, 2011, on page 4.<\/p>\n<p>via THE DAILY STAR :: Business :: Middle East :: Suspending free trade pact harms Syrians: Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Syrian economy, hit hard by five months of anti-government protests, could survive unrest and sanctions into next year but experts and officials warn of a sharp deterioration afterwards. AFP PHOTO\/JOSEPH EID ISTANBUL: Syria is punishing its own people by suspending a free trade agreement with Turkey in retaliation for Turkish sanctions against the Damascus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":47293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[7118],"class_list":["post-47290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-syria","tag-sanctions-against-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}