China must've been long in lira since it's one of Turkey's closest trading allies. The lira has actually been going up quite nicely for the whole year culminating to its high point this summer so if China had been long in lira since the beginning of this year until this summer, it would've made quite a nice profit and that's prob. when Citi loaned it more money for it play a bigger hand. And then it probably got caught in its down leg from the high of this summer until now and that's when Citi's loan sustained the loss. Just my personal speculation. Wonder how much did this "Asian hedge fund" lose.