President Trump is required to impose sanctions on Turkey for purchasing high-end Russian weaponry under a just-passed defense bill that could spark a reckoning with the key NATO ally.
“That is huge,” said former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, marveling at the rarity of “a NATO member-state being sanctioned by the U.S.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan risked sanctions when he imported Russian S-400 anti-aircraft defense system in 2019, in defiance of a U.S. policy designed to punish Moscow’s aggression by driving business away from the Russian defense industry. Trump’s team has avoided applying that law against Turkey, but Erdogan has provoked a backlash on Capitol Hill through a series of foreign policy decisions regarded as “disturbing” by key lawmakers.
“It is unacceptable that a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally like Turkey’s President Erdogan has decided to purchase, keep, and test the Russian S-400 missile defense system,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jim Risch said following the passage of the annual defense authorization bill. “This year’s NDAA makes clear that Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 system is a sanctionable activity and therefore mandates the imposition of sanctions on Turkey for this purchase.”
Erdogan dismissed the legislative move as “disrespectful against a strategic NATO ally” while his advisers pledged that the sanctions would “be counterproductive” for the United States.
“They would harm relations,” a Turkish official told Reuters. “We won’t accept one-sided impositions.”
Trump expelled Turkey from the F-35 stealth fighter jet program in 2019, which is known as CAATSA. That decision came with its own downsides, as the exception for Turkey risked irritating other U.S. allies who would consider purchasing weapons from Russia.
“CAATSA sanctions are very much a risk, and they don’t have a time limit or a clock,” State Department assistant secretary R. Clarke Cooper, who leads the bureau of political-military affairs, told reporters last week. “The scope of CAATSA sanctions are varied, and those can be applied at any given time by any administration.”
CAATSA requires the president to choose five sanctions from a suite of options, but even the milder options are expected to discourage Western private investors from doing business with Turkey.
“They will feel further skepticism toward investing in Turkey,” said Erdemir, the former Turkish lawmaker. “So, this is likely to exacerbate Western capital flight from Turkey and put additional strain on Turkish currency.”
That prospect failed to deter Turkey from deploying the anti-aircraft systems and, according to reports, using them to track U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets during exercises conducted by a bloc of other NATO members. The European governments ordered the drills in the wake of Turkish threats against Greece in a dispute over maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, a controversy that spurred the European Union to consider sanctions against Erdogan’s government.
Erdogan commands the second-largest military in NATO, while Turkey’s position on the southeastern flank of the alliance, bordering both Europe and Syria, has allowed Erdogan to use the Syrian refugee crisis to punish European leaders who cross him.
“This situation harms the common interests of Turkey and the EU as well as peace, security, and stability of our region,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Friday in response to the impending threat of EU sanctions.
Turkey’s economic dependence on Europe presents Erdogan with a long-term dilemma, however, as economic sanctions could foster domestic political pressure on his government.
“Turkey is economically, so strongly connected with the West that it can’t really survive without the West,” Erdemir said. “So, Erdogan’s pivot away from the West has come with disastrous consequences for the average Turkish citizen (that is, unemployment and impoverishment), and you will see more of that. These sanctions will only make it worse.”
