The Teletype article “What to Consider to Avoid Being Deceived” presents Türkiye as an attractive sourcing alternative for Russian importers. Written in April 2023, it points to shorter logistics, lira or ruble settlement, European-standard manufacturing, and brands not yet represented in Russia. It also gives sensible practical advice: meet suppliers, inspect the first shipment, use a written contract, avoid undeclared “cargo” routes, and prepare certification and customs documents early.
The weakness is not that this advice is wrong. It is that the article treats transaction hygiene as if it were a complete risk system.
Calling Türkiye a “friendly country” is especially misleading in a commercial checklist. Governments have relationships; payments move through particular banks, goods have particular origins and tariff codes, and companies have owners, customers, and compliance obligations. None of those facts becomes safe because the two trading countries are politically cordial. A Turkish supplier may be legitimate while its bank rejects the transfer. A product may be legal to buy in Türkiye but restricted for re-export to Russia. A contract may satisfy Russian currency-control rules while leaving the importer exposed to sanctions, origin, warranty, or enforcement problems elsewhere in the chain.
The article’s discussion of national-currency payments illustrates the problem. Paying in lira can reduce one conversion and avoid a dollar correspondent bank, but that does not make a payment inherently “safer.” It replaces one set of exposures with others: exchange-rate movement, bank-specific screening, liquidity, repricing, and the risk that a payment route disappears between purchase order and settlement. Since 2023, the United States has explicitly warned foreign financial institutions that facilitating significant transactions involving Russia’s military-industrial base can create sanctions risk. That matters even to businesses outside the United States because banks manage access to correspondent relationships, not merely the currency printed on an invoice.
Product risk is also treated too generally. “Check whether certification is required” is a start, but a usable process begins with the precise HS code, product origin, manufacturer, end user, end use, and every intermediary. The US Bureau of Industry and Security’s Common High Priority List highlights commercially ordinary components that carry heightened diversion risk. EU measures have also named Türkiye-based entities in connection with circumvention. An importer of appliances, electronics, automotive parts, or machinery therefore needs item-level screening, not a country-level impression.
Even the supplier checks remain too informal. A factory visit can confirm that a factory exists; it cannot establish beneficial ownership, authority to export a brand, solvency, sanctions exposure, or whether the bank account on a late invoice really belongs to the contracted entity. Those require registry documents, ownership and sanctions screening, reference checks, verified banking instructions, a defined inspection standard, Incoterms, insurance, acceptance criteria, remedies, and a plan for rejected payments or stranded cargo. The handshake is useful for trust, but useless as evidence when the dispute crosses borders.
The article is best read as a dated sourcing primer, not a safety guide. Its strongest recommendation is to avoid grey logistics, yet its broader framing still encourages a shortcut: substituting confidence in a trade corridor for verification of the actual transaction. The safer addendum is simple. Do not ask whether Türkiye is friendly. Ask whether this supplier, product, payment path, shipment, and end use can each survive independent scrutiny—and ask again before every order.