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PayPal To Suspend Business Operations In Turkey Following License Denial (thestack.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the shown-the-door dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: PayPal has announced the suspension of its business operations in Turkey as of June 6, citing failure to obtain a new license for its service in the country. Turkey has made recent efforts to promote its own domestic tech sector, advancing censorship laws and other regulation to push large international companies out of the market. PayPal, as the latest victim on this trail, posted a statement on its local Turkish website today: "PayPal's priority has always been its customers. However, a local financial regulator has denied our Turkish payments license and we have had to regretfully comply with its instruction to discontinue our activities in Turkey." The denial of PayPal's license, by local financial regulator BDDK, comes following the introduction of new national rules in Turkey which require IT systems to be based within the country itself. PayPal runs its global business from a large portfolio of IT centers around the world. Turkey isn't the only country tightening its grip on the Internet. The Iranian government has given companies behind popular messaging apps one year to move their data onto servers in Iran.

61 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Short-sighted by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    Do governments expect people to make accounts with all the "PayPal-type" companies in the world?

    The only thing this will accomplish is push people to use Bitcoin or another decentralized crypto-currency.

    1. Re:Short-sighted by sims+2 · · Score: 2

      That's not necessarily a bad thing paypal regularly does anti customer things like tricking people into using their credit service, not allowing people to opt out of offers for their credit service, requiring a phone call to be removed from the service after accidentally signing up for their credit service, freezing accounts with pretty much no accountability and using whatever payment method is cheapest for them by default with no option to change the default setting.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re:Short-sighted by ryanmetcalf · · Score: 1

      I keep hearing horror stories of accounts frozen and such, but after 12 years of PayPal use [since '04] as both an eBay seller, frequent buyer, and exchanger of payment amongst friends, I've never witnessed such problems first hand.

    3. Re:Short-sighted by chipschap · · Score: 1

      Paypal can be hard to work with. As my own example, once I received $3,000, which was a loan repayment from a relative, and PayPal decided to "investigate." Whatever they did took over a week after which they cancelled the transaction with no reason given. I can understand security and prudence, but they could at least communicate (they did not answer my requests for an explanation).

    4. Re:Short-sighted by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      Me neither. All the problems I've heard about were fringe cases were huge sums of cash were involved.

    5. Re: Short-sighted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wait until you have a buisness with pay pal that is something other than selling through eBay.

      I know tonnes of buisness that have accounts frozen and money held, some of their holds are 180 days and require ever escalating identity checks.

      For little stiff they don't care. But for small buisness they can cripple your cash flow in a second.

    6. Re:Short-sighted by topologist · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The most routinely annoying example of Paypal sliminess is their refusal to allow a user to set the default payment source to a credit card.

      If you have a linked bank account, it defaults to that, and you have to manually change it for every payment. This is clearly based on the hope that many users will neglect to do so, and so they can debit money with no cost to them from your bank account (while charging the recipient 3.5% or more), rather than paying the credit card transaction fees (some of which go back to the buyers, if they're smart and have cash back or rewards cards).

      Followed by their invariable attempts to sell your their horrible credit cards, dire and false warnings about credit card charges unless you use a bank account, false warnings about foreign exchange conversion fees.

      Not the most egregious issues I'm sure (I've never sold anything via ebay or paypal), but makes the whole experience unpleasant.

    7. Re:Short-sighted by topologist · · Score: 1

      Oh also, their periodic demands for your SSN (entirely unnecessary and not required by law).

    8. Re:Short-sighted by ganjadude · · Score: 1

      i havent used paypal since about 10 years ago i made a deal with someone over some memorabilia. It wasnt a cheap piece, about 250 bucks. Anyway the mail got delayed by about 2 days (weather) and the guy complained. so they gave him the money back.

      when he got the stuff, he told paypal, they gave me my money back, minus fees of like 20 bucks. When i complained about the fees, they shut down my acct instead of refunding me the fees, that i should not have had to pay.

      i long for the day of paypal alternatives that are not run by a bunch of scum

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    9. Re:Short-sighted by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      IMHO, this is a case where going "BitCoin" might be an option. If Paypal started offering BitCoin (or other CryptoCurrency) option instead of localized currency there is no way that Turkey could stop them, since they couldn't tell if the technology was in country or out of country. But then again, Paypal wouldn't do such a thing, since it would leave the proprietary bits of Paypal on the threshing room floor

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    10. Re: Short-sighted by reezle · · Score: 2

      Agreed. I had their service for many years (10+) with no issues until the one time I did. Turns out being a long-time satisfied customer of theirs doesn't mean they will go to bat for you.
      They were happy to lose me as a customer over $125 of faulty (doa) merchandise a vendor refused to accept for return.
      The convenience of PayPal is not worth losing the protections your bank's fraud department would normally give you.

    11. Re:Short-sighted by Iamthecheese · · Score: 1

      their invariable attempts to sell (you) their horrible credit cards

      I can confirm that their credit cards are horrible. I made a single late payment and they closed my credit card account recently. I wasn't angry they closed it, I was angry I didn't get to close it first. Otherwise their customer service is nonexistant, getting a human requires calling during business hours and waiting up to an hour, their automated phone service is a re-purposed speak-and-spell, and they don't give the tiniest shit about you as a customer much less as a human. Their customer service once literally hung up on me. Paypal is also horrible because privacy rape.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    12. Re:Short-sighted by gtall · · Score: 1

      You have to remember what this decision is for: Erdogan is a whore who wants to bury democracy. One less element in his nascent fascist state is one more point he figures to be in his favor. Merkel lost her chance, when talking to the press about Erdogan, she should have finished it off with Heil die neue Fuehrerin...even if the little fuck thinks of himself as male.

    13. Re:Short-sighted by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

      Paypal alternative... that isn't a bunch of scum...

      Well, there's the bitch of it isn't it.

      Let's imagine you're an honest person interested in setting up a payment processing system. You also want to provide your customers with some form of insurance against fraud and you want to operate on a scale large enough to accept payments worldwide and have legal means of moving cash in and out of your system. You also want to avoid violating tax laws, support proper reporting methods required by payment processing firms around the world. You want to make it flexible enough to support easy integration into people's websites and businesses.

      Then you realize that because of :
        a) banking regulation
        b) electronic money transfer regulation
        c) fear from banks over competition
        d) scale (the world IS BIG)
        e) trust (you're a small nobody, who will actually trust you with their money)
        f) insurance laws
        g) laundering laws
        h) international trade restrictions
        i) human stupidity (95% of all support calls are probably morons who can't find the any key and are on the phone for 25 minutes)
        k) honesty (most of your initial customers are choosing you because they can't choose anyone else)
        l) angel investors (there are some that don't suck.... but anyone willing to give you enough money to actually start such a business want a 70% or more)
        m) advertising (you'll need to do it in 100 countries and 50+ languages to build legitimacy)
        n) fraud fraud fraud ... just like porn drives all new technologies, fraud drives all new payment systems. I worked as a developer in banking for a while... you'd be absolutely shocked.

      I can go for a while. But believe it or not, PayPal is doing REALLY REALLY well considering what they do. They kinda suck now in many ways, they become more and more like a traditional bank every day... except they are "too big for their britches" so to say. Just guessing, they probably have nearly 100,000 transactions a day which are disputed by someone or another.

      My experience so far has led me to believe their dispute system is handled by a room of monkeys that see the dispute messages and they click "For Buyer" or "For Seller" and then suspect that 90% of all disputes will end there. Then they make it as hard as humanly possible to contact them which will chase off another 90% of what's left... then they leave on hold long enough that their call room in India or China might be able to handle it... but you'll be talking to someone that has only talked with people who are REALLY REALLY REALLY pissed or REALLY REALLY REALLY desperate for 12+ hours a day 5-6 days a week for the past 2 years. Most everyone they talk to begs, cries or yells at them. They are utterly destroyed people you're talking to. They lack all human emotion anymore as they've been hardened. They probably get home from work, look at their kids and think to themselves "if they ask me for ANYTHING, I will kill them or myself or both".

      So... while I sympathize with you... I think as long as there are dishonest people or stupid people in the world and there are regulations to hopefully help protect people, such a system is impossible.

    14. Re:Short-sighted by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

      and it will drop 50% next week. That's trading in general. But since bitcoin can't really be regulated, there's absolutely no protection.

    15. Re:Short-sighted by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

      I was heading to the office in a little bit... it's 1:30am... for shits and giggles, I should get my hard drive out of the box in the garage. If I can still read the thing and figure out how it works, I have 3-4 bitcoins I mined a while back in there :)

    16. Re:Short-sighted by tsa · · Score: 1

      Exactly this: it's not about controlling the internet but about controlling and monitoring the people who use it.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    17. Re:Short-sighted by lgw · · Score: 1

      Since use of bitcoin is easily regulated, a government can restrict it pretty effectively within its borders.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. hey, just disconnect, you guys in Turkey! by swschrad · · Score: 1

    yeah, you with the gold stars on your greatcoat. just pull the plug that hooks you to the decadent scum in the rest of the world. keep it local. we don't mind.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  3. More countries will follow by JcMorin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I predict in the future more countries will require company to host data in their own country. We already started to see those kind of policy from search engine, social media and now the banking sector. What kind of nightmare it will be have a global company?

    1. Re:More countries will follow by pr0t0 · · Score: 1

      It's a terrifying thought that more countries might follow-suit in an effort to gain control over the internet, thus fracturing it. The reasons are many: control and money of course, restricting speech, restricting anti-national views from within and without the borders, spying and data-mining, etc, etc. The internet has eroded national borders in many ways, and thus eroded some of the power and influence a government has over its people.

      That would be an awful, awful state of affairs if the internet grows less global and not more. /shudder

      --
      I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
    2. Re:More countries will follow by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Technically, it's not too awful hard to do - it just involves a buttload of DB/disk replication.

      That said, the problem I have with it isn't technical, but political: The reason Iran/Turkey/etc want that data local is because they want to comb through it in order to find dissidents to jail and/or torture (of course they'll use the term "spies", "counter-revolutionaries", "criminals", etc).

      *That* is the problem here.

      The technical side is surprisingly easy in this aspect, and gives the benefit of adding DR and local cache/speed capabilities.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:More countries will follow by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Pretty much. Every time the US or EU demand this or that locality or back door, think how dictators in China, Russia, or a hundred countries south of Europe and the US cackle in glee at being able to use it to track and disappear dissidents.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    4. Re:More countries will follow by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

      To be perfectly fair though this isn't really that different to any national government, except maybe in the outcome to the individual. The US wants access to the data to track money moving for criminal and security reasons. Turkey & Iran would want it for the same.

      The real differences is what happens to someone when they are identified as a problem person. In the US they might end up in the legal system incarcerated for life. Somewhere else they might disappear.

  4. Thinking this is going to backfire by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

    So every IT company has to have infrastructure in Turkey to do business there? Sounds like they'll seriously limit their ability to participate in modern global commerce.

    1. Re:Thinking this is going to backfire by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      No, but IT companies that plan to do a significant amount of financial transactions with Turkish citizens or companies apparently do.

  5. Unfortunate but not unreasonable by ADRA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As much as I hate protectionism in general, it isn't unreasonable that a country wants the right to subpoena information about financial transactions (please no trolling, laize faire bitcoin nut jobs). The fact that the records are physically located in the country isn't surprising as it enforces that leverage on the companies doing business there.

    Nobody blinks an eye when the EU demands patient records and other 'protected' confidential data being held solely in Europe, but being financial in nature, all of a sudden that's overreaching?

    All I can say is if you're a multi-national without the ability to data partition geographically, whatever your business is in, you're just welcoming a pain in the ass now or in the near future.

    I imagine this really comes down to cost. Turkey probably isn't a big enough market to justify the datacenter. This is news people!! ...

    --
    Bye!
    1. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by StormReaver · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is a direct response to NSA/GCHQ spying. The rest of the world, even those that oppose us, used to at least trust that their data were their own. This is the fallout of the U.S. and U.K. dipping their fingers into everyone's pies.

      Good job, spooks. You made the world a worse place than it would have been without you.

    2. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a direct response to NSA/GCHQ spying. The rest of the world, even those that oppose us, used to at least trust that their data were their own. This is the fallout of the U.S. and U.K. dipping their fingers into everyone's pies.

      Good job, spooks. You made the world a worse place than it would have been without you.

      Yeah, YOU know what drives Turkey to demand things from large corporations.

      YOU know what drive PayPay to decide not to to business in Turkey.

      How the hell do you know it wasn't because the growing Islamic influence in Turkey wanted to make it hard for a "degenerate" Western/US company that supports gay rights?

      How the hell do you know the decision wasn't driven by PayPal not wanting to do business under the terms imposed by a gang of barbaric homophobes stuck in the Dark Ages?

    3. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      You and I both know the difference here: EU members don't make it a regular habit to look for dissidents to silence.

      Also, subpoenas can (and very often do) cross borders. The days of hiding one's ill-gotten money in a Swiss bank account are long past, since a simple subpoena almost always results in the Swiss bank happily providing every last record they have on a given depositor.

      Not all countries do this of course, but most do, and IIRC Turkey is among those members.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Both are less likely than good old corruption. South Korea banned Uber, to the cheers of "taxi consumer protectionszzz" nuts everywhere, then immediately handed their business model out for legal use by the politicians' connected cronies.

      Same thing here. Why the hell do people think people go into government in the first place?

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    5. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by harrkev · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How the hell do you know the decision wasn't driven by PayPal not wanting to do business under the terms imposed by a gang of barbaric homophobes stuck in the Dark Ages?

      Well, maybe because PayPal still has a Saudi Arabia office, where homosexuality can carry the death penalty.

      --
      "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
    6. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by gtall · · Score: 1

      Bullshit, Erdogan was on the fascist bent long before any spying by NSA/GCHQ. Please try to keep up.

    7. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by zmooc · · Score: 1

      [quote]Nobody blinks an eye when the EU demands patient records and other 'protected' confidential data being held solely in Europe, but being financial in nature, all of a sudden that's overreaching?[/quote]

      The EU does not demand that. The EU demands that information is well-protected (which may in turn mean that you should keep it out of the US). It does not forbid data to leave the EU at all. Turkey does.

      [quote]All I can say is if you're a multi-national without the ability to data partition geographically, whatever your business is in, you're just welcoming a pain in the ass now or in the near future.[/quote]

      How the hell do you expect that to work? Paypal facilitates international transactions. In order to comply to the approach you're proposing, they would have to keep data about all international transactions in at least two countries. In a world where every country acted like Turkey, there would be no international transactions.

      It's not just overreaching; it's ridiculous incompetent idiot behavior.

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
    8. Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      How the hell do you know....

      Perhaps because it says so right there in the story? Hell, it even says so right in the summary. Turkey wants to control its data, and the NSA/GCHQ have shown that they must surrender their data. Connect the dots. It's obvious.

  6. How to... by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    How to take your N world country and turn it into a N-1 world country: Restrict the Intertubez.

    Way to walk it back.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re: How to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's n+1

    2. Re: How to... by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      er... yeh. :)

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  7. Can't really say I blame 'em. by mmell · · Score: 1

    The internet tore down the majority of border walls worldwide, at least from an information/commerce perspective. Various countries have tried different solutions (international agreements/treaties, great firewalls, local laws, etc.), but the only way to assert sovereign control of network resources is to ensure that those resources lie within and are subject to the laws of the governing nation. For a lot of countries, not being able to control commerce/information/communication is a major issue which the internet has created.

  8. Turkey -- Islamic fascist dictatorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ex-Miss Turkey sentenced for insulting Erdogan

    A Turkish court has convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, giving her a 14-month suspended prison sentence.

    Merve Buyuksarac, 27, was found guilty of insulting a public official for postings she made on social media. She denied insulting Mr Erdogan.

    And these fuckers want into the EU?!?!

    Will Europe grow a spine?

    1. Re: Turkey -- Islamic fascist dictatorship by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      For the past year or so erdogan has sued on average three people a day, every day. Turkey doesn't belong in the EU.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    2. Re:Turkey -- Islamic fascist dictatorship by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      "bastion of freedom" - Oxymoron spotted.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  9. Re:Let's not exaggerate... by aicrules · · Score: 1

    Paypal provides a service. I like to use it for some transactions. If you don't for any reason, that is fine. I would hope your country doesn't decide that for you though.

  10. Turkey belongs in Europe by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 1

    It was a mistake to keep Turkey out of the EU. If they had been given a pathway to membership in the 1990s they would have had to avoid all this Trumpist protectionism nonsense, they'd have gotten with the program, and they'd have opened their market up to international competition. Instead the hand of extremists has been strengthened in a country where the progressive side of politics once stood a decent chance of modernizing the place.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
    1. Re:Turkey belongs in Europe by gtall · · Score: 1

      No, it wouldn't. Erdogan and his dirty little political party never believed in democracy. He was always going be little pint sized dick.

  11. Bias Writing by SumDog · · Score: 1

    This feels really bias. PayPal is a major international player and they're pretty much the size of several big evil banks.

    America is the only country I've lived in within the past several years where individuals cannot send money to each other electronically for free, via the national banking system. In Australia, you need someone's name, bsb and account number and you can send money to anyone, with any bank, for free, from your phone or web browser. In NZ, the bank and account number are one big number, and you can transfer money to anyone, on any bank, for free using your phone or the bank's web site. In Germany and other EU countries, you get the added protection of a TAN number; a one time use code.

    In America, we still have no person-to-person system and we never will because companies like PayPal are big and Square are growing and there is a lot of money to be made in keeping a system like that from every being implemented.

    Maybe Turkey is just tired of PayPal being a big massive banking giant and maybe they want to promote their own technology and allow transfers to be free without the need of an external company?

    Of course, considering that recent data leak and the quality of their software, any attempts will probably be horrible.

    1. Re:Bias Writing by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 1

      Just to bring up information- I (being a Chase bank customer) recently discovered Chase QuickPay- it makes it relatively easy (and free) to send money to people. I am not entirely sure how it works for someone who does not have a Chase account, but they claim to be a part of "clearXchange" which a quick google search shows cooperation between many American banks.

      So person-to-person does exist in the US. For free. The banks probably were worried about competing with Facebook's system

  12. Re:An use case for Bitcoin. by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    wrong, bitcoin will be outlawed by the countries or heavily regulated. already happening elsewhere

  13. Tough for small online businesses by Mysteryprize · · Score: 1

    This is a big problem for small businesses there who use Paypal for payment processing, especially when they do most of their selling through sites such as eBay -- suddenly they suddenly have to find another solution. Apparently many people are looking into setting up bank accounts outside of Turkey to get around it; one of the options a lot of people are considering is Estonia's e-Resident scheme, which allows you to register your company and use a bank account in Estonia.

  14. Re:Turkey needs to take a look at its neighbors by tnk1 · · Score: 1

    Ataturk must be spinning in his grave.

  15. Turkey needs regime change by MajVariola · · Score: 1

    Turkey is an increasingly unacceptable "ally". We need quick regime change, think Spec Ops. Ergodan needs exile asap. How evil can our "allies" get before we recognize them?

    1. Re:Turkey needs regime change by gtall · · Score: 2

      Aye, what the U.S. should do is declare Kurdistan is the brand, spanking new NATO ally...after shipping Incirlik to Kurdistan and removing the U.S. defensive missiles in Turkey.

  16. Not such a bad idea... by matbury · · Score: 1

    The current regime in Turkey certainly isn't winning any civil or human rights awards at the moment. I'm no fan of them myself. However, what is this policy really doing? If the data centres must physically be in the country then they're under the jurisdiction of the local courts for things like protecting consumer rights and making it easier for Turkish citizens to take PayPal to court when it (frequently and arbitrarily) screws its users over.

    1. Re:Not such a bad idea... by thejynxed · · Score: 1

      From what I've read elsewhere about the new laws, this isn't about protecting customers at all, but is protectionist to their own fledgling companies, but more importantly, it gives their government direct access to everything passing through those servers, and everything that direct access by the Turkish government implies. Oh, you live outside of Turkey and buy something from someone in Turkey? The entire unencrypted version of the data of that transaction is soon to be in the hands of Edrogan's government.

      --
      @Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
    2. Re:Not such a bad idea... by matbury · · Score: 1

      The entire unencrypted version of the data of that transaction is soon to be in the hands of Edrogan's government.

      Do you mean as well as the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK (AKA the Five Eyes)?

  17. The headline I'd REALLY like to see, by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

    would read "PayPal to suspend business operations". Full stop, no qualifiers.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  18. solution for a user? by freedom4us · · Score: 1

    I have been using paypal/ebay for years, and made more than a hundred payments online. Now I am thinking of a solution to circumvent paypal geographic restriction, do you have any ideas how I can do it? first a new account with a vpn, then an address outside Turkey? how about the credit card? is it possible to get a virtual card from a company that gives no credit actually but just for carrying out the transactions when there is enough balance in it? I need ideas really, thank you.

  19. after changes in PayPal can't really blame them by Yarq · · Score: 1

    Trust is important when it comes to money. I use PayPal to mitigate risk for dodgy sites requiring i.e. credit card information. Until recently I was able to use fast funds adding - directly from my bank account to PayPal account in same bank and it took minutes. But recently PayPal changed (at least in Europe) payment operator and now to use fast funds adding they require from me to supply this operator with MY login to bank and MY password to bank and THEY logon to MY account and make required transfer.
    Such convenience (they think).

    I'm not gonna do it. No fscking way.

    Bank has no obligation to make any refunds in such situation when something goes sideways. Situation was even catched by regulatory body here in Poland which published recommendation against such practice - as a warning to banks customers.

    Only option for me now is to make standard bank transfer and wait 2 (two) working DAYS for funds to appear on my PayPal account.

  20. Turkey, Iran by fnj · · Score: 1

    Hmm, what do these two cesspools have in common? Oh yeah. They're both living in the dark ages.

  21. Re:Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    Before taking office, was Erdogan by any chance a real estate developer with a chain of hotels and casinos?

  22. Cryptonomicon? by SkyLeach · · Score: 1

    Is this about the internet, or is this about national identity and fiscal control?

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