Economy
US, Japan took joint action to shore up yen: Reports
The U.S. and Japan are said to have jointly intervened to prop up the Japanese yen for the first time in nearly 30 years after the currency plunged to its weakest level in decades, media reports, including initial Financial Times (FT) reporting, indicated.
The reported intervention came after the yen slid to 163.24 per dollar last month, its weakest level since 1986, as higher U.S. interest rates, rising oil prices and persistent capital outflows weighed on the currency.
The newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York took the unusual step of selling euros to buy yen on behalf of the U.S. Treasury on Friday.
The transactions were carried out through Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to the Financial Times.
Washington’s move came as the yen rebounded sharply last week, fuelling speculation that Japanese authorities had also intervened in currency markets.
The unit was trading at 160.53 against the dollar on Friday, having risen as high as 158 yen a day earlier.
Meanwhile, a Reuters report on Sunday said that Japan was to announce that Tokyo and Washington indeed took joint action on yen as soon as Monday.
Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama will announce on Monday that Tokyo and Washington took joint action to arrest the yen’s slide to 40-year lows, two Japanese government officials told Reuters.
“Whether Tokyo was actually involved remains unclear, but the price action had all the familiar fingerprints,” Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management wrote in a comment.
Analysts cited by FT estimated Japan’s intervention may have totalled about 8.45 trillion yen ($52.8 billion).
The Nikkei business daily put the amount at between 6 trillion and 7 trillion yen.
According to FT, the move would be the first coordinated U.S.-Japan effort to support the yen since 1998.
A recent Reuters photo of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s notepad during a cabinet meeting at Camp David in Maryland showed the words “To Do,” followed by “Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil.” The Treasury did not respond when approached to comment on the matter.
While surging oil prices and concerns over debt are major reasons for the yen’s weakness, a key driver is the wide gap between interest rates in Japan and those in the U.S. and other major economies.
And with markets increasingly betting that the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) could hike rates again before the end of the year, the divergence is more pronounced.
This gap has encouraged investors to borrow cheaply in yen and invest in other assets outside Japan with better returns, commonly known as a “carry trade,” resulting in capital outflows and downside for the yen.
Türkiye’s crude steel production rose 8.1% on an annual basis to 19.8 million metric tons in the January-June period, according to a report on Saturday referring to the data from the Turkish Steel Producers Association (TÇÜD).
In June alone, crude steel output increased 14.7% from the same month last year to 3.3 million tons, information obtained by Anadolu Agency (AA) from TÇÜD showed.
Final steel product consumption increased 0.4% year-on-year in June to 3.1 million tons, while consumption in the January-June period rose 6.6% to 19.9 million tons.
Steel exports rise
Steel product exports also increased 28.4% by volume in June from a year earlier to 1.7 million tons, while their value climbed 29.7% to $1.2 billion.
In the first six months of the year, exports rose 2.5% by volume compared with the same period of 2025, reaching 7.8 million tons, while export value increased 1.3% to $5.3 billion.
Imports decline in June
At the same time, steel product imports fell 0.8% by volume in June from a year earlier to 1.8 million tons, although their value increased 3.7% to $1.2 billion.
In the January-June period, imports edged up 0.3% by volume year-on-year to 9.3 million tons, while their value declined 2.4% to $6.3 billion.
The ratio of exports to imports improved from 80% in the first half of last year to 83% in the same period this year.
7th largest steel producer
TÇÜD Secretary-General Veysel Yayan said Türkiye maintained its position as the world’s seventh-largest crude steel producer, remaining ahead of Germany.
He noted that the decline seen during the first five months of the year was reversed by the strong performance in June, driven particularly by robust demand from the Middle East and South America.
According to Yayan, steel exports to the Middle East surged 80% in June to 212,600 tons, while exports to South America jumped 406% to 182,500 tons.
He added that the U.K., where exports rose 246% to 407,000 tons in the first six months, and South America, where exports increased 81% to 643,000 tons, stood out as the strongest markets.
In contrast, the European Union market remained weak. Exports of steel products to the bloc fell 22% in the first half of the year to 2.6 million tons, making the EU the only regional market where exports declined.
“In the coming period, the Turkish steel sector needs to create long-term and cost-effective financing models to achieve its goals of transforming its current production capacity into a higher value-added, technology-oriented and sustainable structure, and accelerating investments in energy efficiency, low-carbon production and technological modernization,” Yayan said.
Türkiye’s domestically developed fifth-generation fighter jet has successfully completed the pre-flight taxi test of its latest prototype, its developer said Friday.
Footage on social media showed the Kaan warplane conducting the ground test, with technical personnel present as the aircraft taxied under its own power.
Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) said the test was completed successfully but did not disclose additional technical details.
Kaan is Türkiye’s indigenous fifth-generation multirole fighter being developed to meet the operational requirements of the Turkish Air Force and is expected to replace the aging F-16 fleet over the coming decades.
The aircraft made its maiden flight in February 2024, remaining airborne for 13 minutes. It completed its second test flight in May the same year, during which it flew for 14 minutes, reached an altitude of 10,000 feet and a speed of 230 knots.
Following the initial flight, the program entered a phase of production of additional prototypes that will continue the aircraft’s flight-test campaign.
Testing and development activities are continuing with the P1 and P2 prototypes, which feature a more advanced systems architecture.
According to TAI, Kaan is designed to provide air superiority through extended beyond-visual-range air-to-air combat capability, precision strike missions using internally carried weapons at high and supersonic speeds, and advanced combat performance supported by AI and neural network technologies.
The twin-engine fighter is being developed as a fifth-generation multirole platform capable of conducting both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.
Türkiye plans to deliver the first batch of Kaan jets to the Turkish Air Force by the end of 2028, while a domestically developed engine is expected to power the aircraft in the 2030s.
Türkiye’s foreign trade deficit widened more than 26% last month, despite exports seeing their highest-ever June figure, official data showed Friday.
Outbound shipments jumped 21.7% year-over-year to $24.92 billion (TL 1.18 trillion) in June, the third-highest monthly export total ever, Trade Minister Ömer Bolat said.
Imports increased 23% from a year earlier to $35.29 billion, provisional figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute and the Trade Ministry showed.
The trade gap widened 26.2% year-over-year to $10.37 billion.
The export-to-import coverage ratio fell to 70.6% from 71.4% in June 2025.
Excluding energy products and non-monetary gold, exports climbed 23.2% to $23.3 billion, while imports rose 24.3% to just over $28 billion.
The energy- and gold-excluded trade deficit stood at $4.71 billion, with the export-to-import coverage ratio at 83.2%.
Manufactured products accounted for 93.7% of total exports in June, while agriculture, forestry and fishing represented 3.5% and mining and quarrying 2%.
Intermediate goods made up 71.4% of imports, followed by consumer and capital goods, each with a 14.2% share.
Germany was Türkiye’s largest export market in June, receiving $1.97 billion worth of goods. It was followed by the U.S. with $1.54 billion, Italy with $1.35 billion, the U.K. with $1.26 billion and Spain with $1.12 billion.
China was the leading source of imports with $5.28 billion, followed by Russia, Germany, the U.S. and Italy.
In the first half of the year, exports increased 3.5% year-over-year to $135.98 billion, while imports rose 4.6% to $189.12 billion.
The January-June trade gap widened 7.4% to $53.14 billion.
Annualized exports rose 4.1% year-over-year to $277.9 billion as of June, up by $11 billion from $266.9 billion a year earlier, Bolat said.
Exports of medium-high- and high-technology products increased 8.4% in the first half to $56.2 billion.
Despite geopolitical tensions, protectionist measures and weak external demand, Türkiye will continue working to exceed the Medium-Term Program’s export target of $282 billion, Bolat added.
Türkiye’s annualized tourism revenue remained broadly stable in the second quarter despite the Middle East conflict, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said Tuesday.
Şimşek said resilient services exports helped limit the impact of the Iran war on Türkiye’s external balance.
The comments came after data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed tourism revenue in the first half of the year edged down 0.1% year-over-year to $25.75 billion (TL 1.22 trillion).
In the April-June period, the income declined 2.6% year-over-year to $15.87 billion.
Of the total, $15.66 billion came from visitor spending, while $209.5 million was generated by transfer passengers. Turkish citizens residing abroad accounted for 15.6% of visitor-related revenue.
Separate data by the Culture and Tourism Ministry showed visitor arrivals fell about 2.4% to 25.76 million in the first six months. That’s combined with Turkish citizens residing abroad, whose arrivals rose slightly to almost 5 million.
The number of foreign visitors declined 2.96% to 20.77 million, the data showed. In June, the count fell 4% from a year earlier to 5.54 million.
Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy echoed Şimşek’s view, saying Türkiye had maintained its stability in tourism despite the negative effects of the war.
“We believe we have left the most challenging quarter of this year behind us,” Ersoy said.
Spending increases
Despite the weaker visitor numbers, spending per visitor increased.
Average spending per visitor increased 2.5% to $1,005 in the second quarter, while average spending per night rose 2.8% to $113, the TurkStat data showed.
In the first six months, average spending per visitor rose 2.5% to $1,020, while average spending per night increased by the same rate to $108.
Commenting on the figures, Şimşek said annualized tourism revenue stood at $65.2 billion in the second quarter, maintaining the level recorded in 2025 despite adverse geopolitical developments.
“Although the number of visitors declined slightly, average spending per visitor increased compared with last year,” Şimşek wrote on the social media platform X.
“As a result, the negative effects of the war on the current account through services exports were limited. Thanks to the structural improvements achieved under our economic program, we expect the current account balance to remain at sustainable levels,” he added.
Support for tourism sector
Şimşek said the government was continuing measures to cushion the tourism industry from geopolitical tensions.
He said the accommodation tax had been reduced to 1% from 2%, while an additional TL 60 billion in Treasury-backed financing had been made available under the Tourism Support Package.
The government is also providing a monthly TL 1,270 minimum wage subsidy per employee and an additional TL 3,500 monthly social security premium support for workers employed at facilities holding tourism operating licenses, he said.
Şimşek added that the government would continue policies aimed at expanding higher value-added segments such as health, congress, cultural and sports tourism, extending tourism activity throughout the year and strengthening the sector’s international competitiveness.
Meanwhile, outbound tourism spending by Turkish residents rose 7.4% year-over-year to $2.96 billion in the second quarter, the TurkStat data showed.
The number of Turkish residents traveling abroad increased 16.5% to 3.43 million, with average spending per traveler reaching $863.
Anthropic said on Thursday some of its Claude AI models had hacked into the systems of three companies during cybersecurity tests, a disclosure that comes days after rival OpenAI revealed that one of its AI agents went on a rogue attack.
The new incidents were due to a mistake that inadvertently gave Anthropic’s models access to the open internet. That contrasts with OpenAI, whose AI agent independently exploited a novel vulnerability to reach the internet during cyber testing.
Even so, the latest disclosure underscores how AI has increased threats to cybersecurity and how its developers can struggle to keep the capabilities of their models contained.
It is likely to add fuel to an intensifying U.S. government push to better manage AI security risks at a time when Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to release more capable systems ahead of their planned public listings. Prominent leaders at these labs have called for a slowdown to address risks first.
San Francisco-based Anthropic said in a blog post it identified the incidents after reviewing 141,006 test sessions, a process it launched after OpenAI said last week that an autonomous agent powered by its AI models triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of startup Hugging Face.
During cyber testing, Anthropic’s Claude models were told they had no internet access, but a misunderstanding that involved one of Anthropic’s evaluation partners left the systems connected to the public web. That enabled unauthorized access to three organizations’ systems, Anthropic said without naming the organizations.
“Claude compromised the impacted organizations’ infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints,” Anthropic said.
Jeffrey Ladish, executive director of Palisade Research, which studies the offensive capabilities of AI systems, said he suspected a range of top AI companies had experienced other incidents that have gone undetected or had not been publicly disclosed.
“This is only going to get worse as the models get smarter. They’re going to be better at cheating. They’re going to be better at lying,” he said.
Capture-the-flag exercises go awry
Anthropic said the incidents – which it labeled an “operational failure” – involved three separate models: Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model.
The earliest cases date back to April and occurred in evaluation environments that intentionally lacked safeguards so Anthropic could assess what its AI was capable of.
Its models were tasked with so-called “capture-the-flag” challenges, fictional scenarios in which they had to find hidden information in simulated networks.
In one incident, Claude Opus 4.7 was given a fictional target company, which turned out to share the name of a business in the real world. The AI model then found and exploited bugs that let it access credentials and a database of that business. Opus 4.7 rationalized that what seemed to pertain to the real world must have been part of the simulation Anthropic had set up, the AI startup said.
A separate incident involved Anthropic’s newer, not-public test model, which independently halted its attack after realizing the target it reached was real. This behavior has made Anthropic cautiously optimistic about its progress to make AI behave appropriately, “but we would need to perform more testing to be confident in this conclusion,” it said.
Anthropic said it suspended all cyber evaluations on July 23. It notified the affected organizations on July 27, two of which were unaware of the activity before being contacted. Anthropic said it continues to reach out to the third company.
One of its third-party evaluation partners, a cybersecurity lab called Irregular, told Reuters that it has an ongoing investigation into the incidents.
OpenAI’s Altman in talks with senators, white house
Anthropic said the incidents underscore a need for stronger controls in both internal and third-party testing environments as AI models become increasingly capable of carrying out real-world cyber activities.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, which operates a competing AI lab, responded to the news on X by saying “this will happen frequently as AI becomes smarter and more agentic,” referring to computer programs or “agents” that act with limited human intervention.
The OpenAI agent that broke into Hugging Face, a platform used by developers to host and collaborate on AI models, went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t catch until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was informed, Reuters has previously reported.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this week he has discussed the hack with senators on Capitol Hill, and an OpenAI spokesperson said he planned to discuss upcoming AI models and testing with the White House.
Washington has started tightening oversight of new model rollouts. On June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump directed advisers to develop a voluntary cybersecurity testing framework for the most advanced AI, including input from the technology’s developers.
Anthropic earlier restricted access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after the U.S. temporarily issued an export control directive, citing national security concerns.
Türkiye’s second-largest airport became Europe’s fastest-growing aviation hub in the first half of 2026, according to a European airport trade body on Thursday.
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport increased its passenger traffic by 6.4% year-over-year in the January-June period, a report by the ACI Europe said.
That marked the highest growth rate in the “Majors” category, which includes European hubs handling more than 40 million passengers.
ACI Europe said passenger traffic at European airports rose 2.6% in the first half of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.
The traffic growth slowed from 4.3% in the first quarter to 1.3% in the second quarter. Domestic passenger traffic increased 3%, while international passenger traffic rose 2.5%.
According to the report, passenger traffic at airports across Türkiye increased 2.8% in the first six months of the year.
Growth at Sabiha Gökçen, located on Istanbul’s Asian side, exceeded both the European and national averages.
The report said Barcelona Airport ranked second in the “Majors” category with 4.4% growth, followed by Madrid Airport with 4.2%, Istanbul Airport with 1.6% and Rome Fiumicino Airport with 0.3%.
London Heathrow remained the busiest European airport, welcoming a record 40 million passengers in the first half of the year, a 0.2% year-over-year increase.
The British hub kept being closely followed by Istanbul Airport, which increased its passenger count by 1.6% to 39.84 million.
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