Oil for the machines of Turkey lay bottled in the bowels of tankers last June while representatives of four big oil companies served notice on the Turkish government: unless some $50 million in past oil bills was settled, the new shipments would not be unloaded. With only a week's oil in reserve, the government did some frantic juggling and scraped together a payment.
The U.S.'s strongest ally in the Middle East is so strapped that it can barely pay its day-to-day bills.
A newspaper editor reported one day last summer that while Premier Adnan...
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