Trump poised to impose sanctions on Turkey over S-400s in policy reversal

U.S. President Donald Trump may be poised to impose sanctions on Turkey for its purchase of Russian S-400 air defence missiles, reversing course on a policy of blocking such recommendations from the U.S. Congress.

The sanctions, which could be introduced as early as Friday, would target Turkey’s Presidency of Defence Industries and its head, Director İsmail Demir, unidentified sources told Reuters on Thursday. They would be damaging but narrower than the severe sanctions some U.S. politicians have called for.

The United States has repeatedly warned Turkey, a NATO ally, that it could face sanctions should it take delivery of the S-400s. It received the missiles from Moscow in July 2019. The NATO alliance has said the weapons, which Turkey tested in October, threaten the security of its defence network.

The U.S. plans amounted to “disrespect for an important NATO ally”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters in Ankara on Friday, according to state-run Anadolu news agency.

“After the U.S. transfer of power we will no doubt see the trend much more clearly,” he said, referring to the coming Biden presidency. “So it is for us to be patient and see.”

Washington has already removed Turkey from its fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighter jet procurement programme in retaliation for taking delivery of the Russian system.

Trump, who has a warm personal relationship with Erdoğan, has long opposed sanctions called for by his advisers and Congress. Officials in his administration internally recommended measures when Turkey first started taking delivery of the S-400s, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The sanctions were being crafted to be “as mild as possible” to placate Congress while avoiding serious damage to the extensive U.S.-Turkey military relationship, one person familiar with the matter said, according to the Financial Times.

Congress has called for sanctions under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The 12 options under the act include banking restrictions and prohibiting loans from the U.S. and international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The lira weakened by almost 1 percent against the dollar on Thursday after Reuters broke the news of the possible sanctions. It fell another 1.1 percent to 7.98 per dollar on Friday, briefly weakening below 8 against the U.S. currency. Sanctions imposed by Trump in 2018 for Turkey’s detention of a U.S. pastor on terrorism charges helped plunge the country into a currency crisis.

Two sources familiar with the sanctions, including a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Trump had given aides his blessing for the punitive measures.

Trump may have had little choice in the matter. The final version of the $740-billion annual U.S. defence budget (NDAA), which authorises spending and provides broad policy outlines for the Pentagon, would order Trump to impose sanctions under CAATSA within 30 days. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill as early as this week.

One of the reasons Trump was finally willing to move ahead with the sanctions was to “decouple” the issue from the demands contained within the bill, so he could avoid looking like he was being coerced into signing off on them, one of the U.S. officials told Reuters.

Even if Trump refuses to sign the newly unveiled NDAA, there might be enough lawmakers to override the veto, according to CNN. Analysts say the incoming Biden administration may be more open to following through with sanctions against Turkey should lawmakers fail in those efforts.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters any sanctions imposed by the United States would backfire and hurt ties between the two NATO members.

“Sanctions would not achieve a result but be counter-productive. They would harm relations,” the official said. “Turkey is in favour of solving these problems with diplomacy and negotiations. We won’t accept one-sided impositions.”

The potentially imminent U.S. sanctions come as European Union leaders agreed on Friday to apply separate sanctions on Turkey over its unauthorised hydrocarbon drilling off the coast of EU member Cyprus.