US threatens NATO state with sanctions over Russia

Türkiye will face “consequences” if it continues to allow the sale to Russia of American civilian products with military applications during its conflict with Ukraine, a high-ranking US Commerce Department official has told the Financial Times.

Washington is increasingly concerned that its fellow NATO member-state has become a key hub through which Western-made electronics, including processors, memory cards and amplifiers, are making their way to Russia, where, allegedly, they are being used for the production of missiles and drones, the FT wrote in an article on Wednesday.

An unnamed Commerce Department official told the paper that the US considers Ankara, which refused to join the Western sanctions campaign against Moscow, to be Russia’s second largest source of American dual-use goods, after China.

Türkiye must “help” Washington stop the flow of US technology to Moscow, Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, Matthew Axelrod, said in a statement to FT.

“We need to see progress, and quickly, by Turkish authorities and industry or we will have no choice but to impose consequences on those that evade our export controls,” he warned.

According to a commerce-department official, Axelrod told Turkish government members during his recent visit to Ankara and Istanbul that they should “work harder” to curb what he called “illicit trade” with Russia.

The export-enforcement official made it clear then that it was an “urgent problem” and called on Ankara to “adopt and enforce a ban on the transshipment of US controlled items to Russia,” the source told FT. Axelrod also told Turkish officials that Moscow was simply “trying to exploit Turkey’s trade policy” to access American-made products, the FT reports.

The commerce department has already put 18 Turkish companies on its ‘Entities List’ for allegedly supplying dual-use goods to Russia. US firms now require a special license to sell sensitive goods to the entities listed. “You can expect to see more of that, going forward, unless and until there is progress,” the official stated.

In June, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow was aware of the “unprecedented pressure” that is being applied on Türkiye by the US and its allies over their cooperation with Russia.

Representatives of the West “come to Ankara, they gather officials and business leaders and blatantly threaten them… This is absolutely shameless behavior,” he said.

Trade between Russia and Türkiye will continue, Peskov said, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “quite convincingly” defends the interests of his country. Moscow and Ankara are “looking for ways to bypass this pressure from the Westerners, and we will definitely find them,” he vowed.