Turks are taking sledgehammers, handguns and fire to iPhones in a symbolic backing of their government as it clashes with the Trump administration over jailed American pastor Andrew Brunson, CBS News reported on August 16.

Videos showing Turkish citizens stomping on or otherwise destroying iPhones have proliferated online in recent days, following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's call for Turks to boycott US electronic products, it added. In making the call, Erdogan, who claims his country’s current financial ills are the result of an “economic war” being waged by foreign powers, gave a special mention to the iPhone.

The US government insists the espionage and terrorism charges against Brunson are groundless. Turkey and the US have exchanged sanctions and tariffs over the affair. There are also other disagreemens that have caused the rift between Ankara and Washington such as Turkey’s plan to acquire Russia’s S-400 missile defence system, which is not compatible with Nato systems.

In one video circulating online in Turkey an unidentified man with four boys kneeling behind him in front of a Turkish flag, addresses Donald Trump directly, asking him: "Who do you think you are?"

"If you threaten us with hunger you will only make us laugh. Do whatever in your power," he says, before taking a sledgehammer to iPhones handed over by the boys. "Look now what will happen to you iPhones on the orders [of Erdogan]".

Another video shows a lawmaker from the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party, Cemal Enginyurt, buying a Samsung smartphone and asking a fellow party member to throw his old iPhone on the floor and jump on it, the CBS report said.

Other videos show a man shooting his iPhone point blank with a handgun, one being burned in a box full of matchsticks and another, circulated online by an Israeli journalist, of a Turkish boy dumping the contents of a bottle of Coca-Cola down the toilet.

CBS News reported on August 15 how angry Turks have also torn up fake dollar bills in protest.

The Trump administration says Turkey’s financial crisis is down to longstanding imbalances in the country’s economic fundamentals and not at all a result of US sanctions and tariffs.