Turkish banks are withdrawing from the Russian payment system. This is one of the ways in which Ankara expanded its trade with Russia. Tourists also benefited from it. The US let the NATO partner know that Washington could see this as a circumvention of US sanctions.
Paying with bank cards of the Russian payment system Mir will no longer be possible in Turkey in the future. Three Turkish public banks will stop using the system in the foreseeable future, a senior Turkish official said. In the past few weeks, the USA had increased the pressure on its NATO partner Turkey and threatened Ankara with sanctions if nothing changed in the flourishing business of Turkish companies with Russia.
Turkey's two largest private banks, Denizbank and Isbank, announced last week that they would no longer use the Russian payment system. The banks Halkbank, Ziraatbank and Vakifbank have so far continued to allow transactions with Mir payment cards. "There are ongoing payments, but a future date (for hiring) has been set," the official said.
Turkey has so far refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over its attack on Ukraine. At the same time, trade between Turkey and Russia had increased sharply since the beginning of the war. Turkey is also a popular holiday destination for Russian tourists, who have so far been able to pay there with Mir bank cards without any problems.
After a meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in August, an expansion of the use of the Mir system was announced. Two private Turkish banks that started accepting Mir cards recently stopped doing so.
The government in Washington had repeatedly warned Ankara that Turkish companies and banks with connections to Russia could themselves become the target of sanctions. The US Treasury Department said last week that Turkish banks using Russian Mir Bank cards "are at risk of aiding Russia's efforts to circumvent US sanctions."
The Russian government condemned Washington's pressure on Ankara. Turkey is "threatened with secondary sanctions against the banking system". The decision against the Mir system "was of course made under this unprecedented pressure," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
On Friday, Uzbekistan also announced that it had stopped operating Mir bank cards for “technical” reasons. Russian bank cards can now only be used in a handful of countries outside of Russia, such as Belarus.
