Turkey's banking regulator has taken over Bank Asya in what many see as a politically motivated piece of sabotage.

The Turkish Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency has reportedly taken over a 63% holding in Bank Asya, the Islamic lender that has been wilting for the past few years under a presidential onslaught. The takeover does not get a mention on the regulator's website. Bank Asya invests the money of high-net-worth investors in an Islamic way and formerly held about 4% of the country's financial assets.

The bank, one of the world's most well capitalised, has been part-nationalised on the theory that its capital stocks are not high enough. According to Turkey's Zaman, its capital adequacy ratio in August last year was greater than 15%, 7 points higher than the legal requirement of 8%. The BDDK adds a four-point margin to this legally specified ratio and does not want any bank to have a ratio below 12%, but Asya apparently out-topped even this stipulation.

Bank Asya was, and perhaps still is, the largest participation bank in Turkey, although s net income plummeted 81% in the second quarter of 2014. It reportedly has strongly ties with the controversial Gülen movement, led by the Islamic cleric and preacher Fethullah Gülen, and is widely considered to be founded and operated by his followers. This seems to have placed it on a collision course with the ruling AK Party, which declared it and the Gulen movement a national security threat. Erdogan's government has been making great play about uncertainties surrounding its ownership structure - a refreshing change from the United States, whose money is issued by the Federal Reserve, a shadowy banking conglomerate that is not audited and whose private owners have never been identified on any official public register.