Türkiye ran a $10.37 billion trade deficit in June. Take energy and non-monetary gold out of it and the figure is $4.71 billion.
The latest. The Turkish Statistical Institute published its June 2026 foreign trade figures on 31 July 2026, compiled with the Trade Ministry and still provisional. Exports reached $24.92 billion, up 21.7% on last year, which Trade Minister Ömer Bolat called the highest June figure on record and the third-highest month in Türkiye's history. Imports rose 23% to $35.28 billion. The deficit widened 26.2%. The energy import bill was $5.92 billion, up 28.8%, while the volume of crude oil coming into the country fell 9.1% to 2.66 million tonnes (2.93 million US tons). The same week, Iran said it had struck a US air base in Kuwait and stopped tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and Kuwait said it shot the drones down.
What the release says
The headline numbers are good ones. Bolat's record June, and manufacturing at 93.7% of everything Türkiye sold abroad.
The gap sits underneath them. Exports covered 70.6% of imports in June, down from 71.4% a year earlier.
Then the release does something useful: it publishes the same month with energy and non-monetary gold taken out. On that basis exports were $23.30 billion and imports $28.02 billion, so the deficit was $4.71 billion and the coverage ratio 83.2%.
The difference between the two deficits is $5.66 billion. That is what energy and gold add to the gap, net of what Türkiye sells in those same categories, and it is more than half the deficit for the month.
June also ran much hotter than the year so far. Over January to June exports rose 3.5% to $135.98 billion and imports 4.6% to $189.12 billion, for a half-year deficit of $53.14 billion, up 7.4%. A single month at 26.2% is not the trend yet.
One line in the country tables is worth sitting with. Türkiye's second-largest source of imports in June was Russia, at $3.67 billion, behind China at $5.28 billion and ahead of Germany.
Bolat put the annual picture above all of it. Exports over the twelve months to June came to $277.9 billion, up 4.1% and $11 billion more than the year before, against a Medium-Term Program target of $282 billion he said the ministry means to beat.
The bill and the barrels moved in opposite directions
The energy bill rose 28.8%, from $4.59 billion in June last year to $5.92 billion.
Crude oil arrivals fell 9.1%, to 2.66 million tonnes.
Those two figures do not measure the same thing. The bill covers mineral fuels, mineral oils and their distillation products, bituminous substances and mineral waxes. The volume figure is crude alone. So the release will not support a flat sentence about paying more for less, and TÜİK offers no explanation for either number, because a statistical release is not in that business.
What it does show is that the money Türkiye spends on energy is moving independently of how much crude it takes delivery of.
The week behind the figures
June's numbers landed on a Friday that looked like this.
Iran's army said it had launched drones at "strategic" US facilities at Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, naming aircraft hangars, satellite communication systems and equipment warehouses.
Kuwait's army said the opposite happened. Its defense ministry spokesman, Col. Saud Abdulaziz al-Atwan, said the armed forces "detected hostile drones inside Kuwaiti airspace since dawn today, and they were dealt with and destroyed." Falling debris caused material damage, he said, and nobody was hurt.
Neither account has been independently confirmed, and the United States has not commented on Iran's damage claim.
In the Strait of Hormuz the pattern repeats. The Revolutionary Guard said its naval forces hit and stopped two tankers that had used what it called an undeclared route under US air escort, and that four more turned back after warnings. It said it had told shipowners and insurers to disregard statements from US Central Command.
CENTCOM, a day earlier, said US forces had redirected 24 commercial vessels and disabled and boarded four to ensure compliance, and rejected the Guard's claim that the strait is unsafe, saying the threat to civilian crews comes from the Guard.
Not one ship is named in either account. Whether any vessel bound for Türkiye was among them is unknown.
None of this is new ground. Iran fired on American bases in Kuwait and Bahrain on 8 July, and both countries said then that their air defenses intercepted the incoming fire.
Across the border it is worse
The same shock reaches Iraq's Kurdistan Region without the cushion of a $35 billion import bill.
Attacks by Iran and Iran-backed groups on Erbil and Sulaymaniyah forced energy companies there to suspend production, cutting fuel supply and choking gas deliveries to power stations. Electricity that used to run around the clock is down to five or six hours a day, in the hottest part of the year.
Cooking gas has more than doubled on the black market, to between 25,000 and 30,000 Iraqi dinars a cylinder ($17 to $20), from 12,000 to 15,000 before the attacks. Premium gasoline went to 1,900 dinars a liter from 1,550.
The regional government set price ceilings at 1,200, 1,000 and 850 dinars. Stations ran dry instead. Some drivers queued overnight for the following morning's fuel.
Rebin Samad, an energy analyst, told Anadolu Ajansı that the fighting has interrupted shipments of the chemical additives gasoline production needs, and that the region has no refining capacity of its own to absorb the shock.
Jangi Majid, who heads the Union of Fuel Stations in Erbil, put the arithmetic plainly. The city needs about 2.2 million liters (581,000 US gallons) of gasoline a day. It is getting one million.