Follow us on social

Is US punishing Turkey for its neutral stance on Ukraine War?

Is US punishing Turkey for its neutral stance on Ukraine War?

Secondary sanctions are all the rage as Washington gets more desperate to crack down on unaligned countries.

Analysis | Europe

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on five Turkish companies and one Turkish national accused of helping Russia evade sanctions and supporting Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine, turning up the pressure on Ankara over its neutral stance on the Ukraine war.

“For the past 18 months, we’ve shared our concerns with the Turkish government and private sector and informed them of the significant risks of doing business with those we’ve sanctioned who are tied to Russia’s war,” a senior Treasury official said, according to Reuters. “These designations reflect our ongoing commitment to target individuals and entities who provide material support to sanctioned entities.”

The new round of designations — part of a larger sanctions package targeting a wide array of Russian entities — included Turkish companies Margiana Insaat Dis Ticaret and Demirci Bilisim Ticaret Sanayi, accused of facilitating the transfer of dual-use goods to Russia.

“Margiana’s shipments to [Russian-based entities] SMT-iLogic and Saturn EK have included High Priority Items of the kind recovered in multiple Russian weapons systems used against Ukraine, including the Kalibr cruise missile, the Kh-101 cruise missile, and the Orlan-10 UAV,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Ankara sharply broke ranks with its fellow NATO member states in the weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rejecting the West’s maximum pressure strategy against the Kremlin in an effort to position itself as a possible mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.

Not only has Turkey refused to participate in the Western sanctions regime, but Ankara’s trade relations with Moscow have boomed in the invasion’s aftermath. Reuters reported earlier in 2023 that Turkey’s exports to Russia jumped 262 percent year over year, reflecting the stark degree to which Ankara has profited from the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of Western economic actors from Russian markets.

Moscow and Ankara have even agreed on the construction of a new gas hub on Turkish territory that would provide Russia with alternate supply routes for gas exports, though the ambitious project is apparently being held up by management disputes.

Russia’s economy has proven highly resilient against successive waves of U.S. and EU sanctions packages in large part because it has maintained and even deepened trade ties with much of the non-western world, notably including Turkey, key Middle Eastern actors, and the other BRICS countries. The Biden administration has sought to tighten the screws on Russia by levying secondary sanctions on Chinese, UAE, Turkish, and other entities accused of helping Moscow acquire advanced technology and other goods that U.S. officials say can be used to bolster the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has built a political brand, cemented well before the 2022 Ukraine invasion with his decision to import S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, as a swing player between Russia and the West. Erdogan has proven adept at exploiting the geopolitical leverage afforded by Turkey’s position as a strategically situated Eurasian crossroads, maneuvering between Moscow and Western capitals to advance a ruthlessly pragmatic foreign policy vision that flouts and occasionally even defies broader NATO objectives.

The Ukraine war has provided Erdogan with a surfeit of opportunities to advance this signature brand of statesmanship. Rushing to fill the diplomatic void left by Western states pursuing a maximum-pressure strategy against Moscow, Turkey has cemented its status as one of the war’s most important brokers with its role in hosting the ill-fated Spring 2022 Russia-Ukraine peace talks and implementing the Black Sea Grain Initiative, better known as the Ukraine grain deal.

It appears unlikely that Erdogan will be dissuaded from his nonaligned stance by this latest round of secondary sanctions, which follows a similar set of designations announced in April 2023; nor is there any indication that the Biden administration is contemplating upping the ante with more direct punitive actions against Ankara.

Turkey is poised to continue reaping the benefits of surging trade with Russia, but, with the grain deal recently “terminated” by Moscow and Erdogan himself admitting that there are no “promising prospects of peace” between Russia and Ukraine on the heels of an uneventful meeting with Vladimir Putin earlier this month, Ankara is finding it increasingly difficult to fill its desired mediator niche in a war that both sides say could go on for years.

The designations come at a tense moment in U.S.-Turkish relations, with Washington seeking Turkey’s swift ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership application and Ankara hoping to finalize the looming sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets to Turkey. Erdogan has objected to what he described as President Joe Biden’s desire to condition the F-16 sale on Ankara greenlighting Sweden’s NATO bid, insisting that the decision is up to Turkey’s parliament and blaming Stockholm for not doing more to extradite Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants labeled as “terrorists” by the Turkish government. The timeframe for both decisions remains uncertain.


Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the opening of the Natural Gas Pipeline (turkstream) in November 2018. (questions123/shutterstock)
Analysis | Europe
Trump Milei
Top image credit: U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Argentina's President Javier Milei at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 14, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Trump bet $40B on Milei, but what do Americans get out of it?

Latin America

It has been a busy week for U.S. policy towards Argentina.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday that the U.S. would be doubling the assistance it is marshaling for Argentina from $20 billion to $40 billion. The increase comes ahead of legislative elections on October 26 that will elect half the lower house and one-third of the upper house, and represents an increasingly strenuous effort in Washington to bolster Argentine President Javier Milei financially and politically.

keep readingShow less
Von Der Leyen Zelensky
Top image credit: paparazzza / Shutterstock.com

Blame game erupts in Europe as Ukraine strategy falters

Europe

Angela Merkel, the eternal pragmatist, has chosen her moment. In a recent interview to Hungarian media, the former German chancellor pointed a finger at Baltic and Polish leaders for their alleged role in “undermining” a potential EU-Russia dialogue before the war.

Whatever one thinks of her legacy, Merkel has an unmatched sense of political timing. Her statement is not a historical aside; it is the opening salvo in Europe’s looming blame game for the impending defeat in Ukraine.

Her comments land at the precise moment the foundational assumptions of Europe’s Ukraine policy are collapsing. On the battlefield, Russian forces are now grinding out slow, but steady gains. In the United States, Donald Trump keeps insisting that this is “Biden’s war,” not his, and that it should end.

keep readingShow less
Congo DRC M23
Top photo credit: Demonstration raising awareness of the conflict and humanitarian crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in Brussels in the Brussels Capital province of Belgium on October 8, 2025. (Hans Lucas/Reuters)

No, Trump did not 'end' the war in the Congo. It's as bloody as ever.

Africa

Earlier this week, Donald Trump made the bold claim that he’s responsible for ending eight wars since taking office this past January — in other words, nearly one war each month of his presidency.

Among the wars on his list is the decades-long conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, which has mired central Africa since the days of the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s in a quagmire conflict involving over one hundred armed groups.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.