ISTANBUL: Turkey’s top business association has confirmed receiving aletter from the US Treasury warning of possible sanctions if it continuesdoing business with Russia.
Washington is growing increasingly alarmed that the Russian government andbusinesses are using Turkey to evade Western financial and tradingrestrictions imposed in response to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine sixmonths ago.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart VladimirPutin agreed to step up economic cooperation at a summit in the Black Searesort of Sochi earlier this month.
Official data show the value of Turkish exports to Russia between May andJuly growing by nearly 50 percent from last year’s figure.
Turkey’s imports of Russian oil are ballooning and the two sides haveagreed to transition to ruble payments for the natural gas exported by theKremlin-tied giant Gazprom.
US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo paid a rare visit toAnkara and Istanbul in June to express Washington’s worries that Russianoligarchs and big businesses were using Turkish entities to avoid Westernsanctions.
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NATO member Turkey — on good terms with both Moscow and Kyiv — has triedto stay neutral in the conflict and refused to join the internationalsanctions regime.
Adeyemo followed that up with a letter to Turkey’s TUSIAD businessassociation and the American Chamber of Commerce in Turkey warning thatcompanies and banks were in danger of being sanctioned themselves.
TUSIAD said in a statement on Tuesday that is has passed on the letter toTurkey’s foreign and finance ministries. -APP/AFP
