Firing on all cylinders

摘要

THESE have been testing times for Emin Taha and his Turkish transport company. The war against the so-called Islamic State has reduced much of Mosul, Iraq's second city and a big market for Turkish goods, to rubble. Trade with Iraqi Kurdistan ground to a halt when the federal government in Baghdad reacted furiously to an independence referendum in September. (It deployed troops to the contested city of Kirkuk, seized the nearby oilfields and closed Kurdish airspace to international flights.) Mr Taha, whose company relies on trade with Iraq for the bulk of its revenues, refused to give up. "We told our customers not to worry, to keep selling to Iraq, and that we would stand by them," he says. A 20m lira ($5m) loan backed by Turkey's credit guarantee fund (kgf) helped the company regain its footing and complete work on a number of projects, including new warehouses in Iraq.