Turkish businesswoman puts up Erdoğan poster on Trump Towers in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

A Turkish businesswoman has said she intentionally put up a giant poster of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Istanbul’s Trump Towers to bring his and U.S. President Donald Trump’s names together in a symbolic move. 

Erdoğan’s posters were everywhere after his election as Turkey’s first executive president on June 24, but one of them was highlighted by the media because it appeared on a skyscraper which bears the American president’s name amid the ongoing diplomatic crisis between Ankara and Washington.

Aliye Uzun, the businesswoman who put the poster on Trump Towers on July 15, the anniversary of the defeated coup attempt in 2016, told Hürriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan that her selection was intentional.

“My goal was to put the Trump brand next to Erdoğan’s presidency that I stressed,” Uzun said, according to Hakan's column published on July 31.

She explained that the 250-square-meter banner was carried by seven people and was put up on Trump Towers’ 35th floor for more than one hour “despite some problems raised by the building’s security.”

She also hired a drone crew to film the banner, which read “July 15 is an epic of a nation that trusts its leader and a leader who trusts his nation.”