What is going on with Turkey's gold trade?

A peculiar picture has again appeared in Turkey's gold trade. The export and import of gold bars with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is at the center of this peculiarity.

Journalist Zülfikar Doğan underlined this situation in his article published on the website Al Monitor in mid-May. Alaaatin Akdaş also wrote about it the other day in daily Dünya, and indeed writing about it became a must after the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) recently published details of April's trade figures.

The United States and the European Union placed a trade embargo on Iran in 2010, which extended to the blocking of swift transactions in 2012. Iran tried to break this embargo with the transfer of gold. While one center of this trade was Turkey, the other was the UAE. This seems to have come to an end when the U.S. started to enforce an embargo on the gold trade starting in July 2013.

This is where the peculiarity lies: While Turkey is exporting gold bars it is also importing gold bars. From where? The UAE.

There are three reasons for the need of the gold bar: One is the production of jewelry, another is for savings, and another is as a medium of payment.

According to the calculations I made from the TÜİK figures, Turkey's imports from July 2013 to April 2017 are roughly 630 tons. Exports in the same period are 556 tons. Net imports are 75 tons. A large part of this gold movement was done with the UAE. In the same period, there have been 256 tons of imports and 135 tons of exports with the UAE. The net import is 122 tons, nearly $3 billion.

The question is this: Why does Turkey import gold bars when the demand for gold coins is being exported (as Turkey is a net importer due to the production of jewelry)? There are no gains and...