ANKARA (Dispatches) – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Turkish people not to "divert our money to foreign currency."
Addressing a conference of his ruling party supporters in the capital, he also renewed a call for Turks to convert their dollars into the Turkish lira, to help strengthen the currency.
"You're Turks, you'll walk along your way with the Turkish lira," Erdogan told the conference in Ankara,
The Turkish lira has nosedived in value in the past week over concerns about Erdogan's economic policies and after the United States slapped sanctions on Turkey angered by the continued detention of an American pastor.
 Erdogan has said that Turkey would boycott U.S. electronic goods in retaliation for punitive sanctions from Washington.
He made announcement in a speech in the capital Ankara. "We will boycott U.S. electronic goods."
"We will produce every product we are importing from abroad with foreign currency here and we will be the ones exporting these products. We will impose a boycott on U.S. electronic products. If they have iPhones, there is Samsung on the other side." the president said, referring to U.S. giant Apple's iconic phone and the top South Korean brand.
"We (also) have our Venus and Vestel," Erdogan said about homegrown Turkish electronics brands.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Erdogan said Turkey was facing an "economic attack" and a "bigger, deeper operation".
"They don't hesitate to use the economy as a weapon," he said. "What do you want to do? What do you want to achieve?" he added, referring to the U.S.
Relations between Washington and Ankara have taken a turn for the worse amid bitter dispute over the detention in Turkey of an American evangelical pastor on terrorism charges. The growing rift has also sent the Turkish lira into a tailspin.
U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter late last month that his country "will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew Brunson.” He also said he had ordered to double U.S. tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel imports to 20 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

This handout picture taken and released on August 12, 2018 by the Turkish Presidential Press Office shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeting supporters in the Black Sea city of Trabzon.