President Donald Trump has just given the green light for a bipartisan bill to impose sanctions on Russia’s trading partners, and there is one obvious candidate: Turkey.
Like President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Trump has a soft spot for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan, but now the time has come to turn on the screws. At their “great” meeting in September 2025, Trump told Erdoğan that he would like him to stop buying oil from Russia while Russia continues “this rampage” against Ukraine. Erdoğan ignored him.
Trump’s sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil have made an impact, and there is no reason why sanctions should not work with Turkey. During the Cold War, Turkey was a staunch ally, and it joined NATO in 1952. This no longer applies. When Erdoǧan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it presented itself as Western, reformist, moderate, and neo-liberal. And the United States and the European Union bought the narrative.
During the Cold War, Turkey was a staunch ally, and it joined NATO in 1952. This no longer applies.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gushed at the time, the AKP was “a government dedicated to pulling Turkey west toward Europe.” President Barack Obama spoke of“a model partnership,” but the converse was true. Erdoğan’s aim was to crush military and secular opposition, which his government did in a series of show trials from 2008 to 2013. Then the turn came to Erdoğan’s willing enablers. In 2013, Turkish security forces brutally suppressed the Gezi Park protests. The AKP abandoned its liberal supporters.
After the attempted coup in July 2016, Erdoğan cracked down on a troublesome ally, Turkish imam Fethullah Gülen and his movement, and left Erdoğan as the sole arbiter. Now Erdoğan intends to remove his parliamentary opposition, the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded in 1923.
Erdoğan’s rival is Istanbul’s charismatic mayor Ekrem Imamoǧlu, whom Turkish security arrested in March 2025 on trumped-up charges. Istanbul’s public prosecutor has produced a 3,700-page indictment which carries a prison sentence of 2,352 years.
When Erdoğan was mayor of Istanbul, he made clear his support for shari’a and stated, “Democracy is not our aim. It is the vehicle.” If Erdoğan can gain parliamentary support, he will overturn Turkey’s secular constitution and serve as president for life.
A significant change has similarly marked Turkey’s foreign policy. Seven years ago, Erdoğan’s head of international relations, Ayşe Sözen Usluer, stated that, for the previous ten-to-fifteen years, Turkey had felt no need to choose between the West and the East or between the United States and Russia; Ankara no longer saw its foreign policy within the framework of the Cold War or East versus West alliances.
Accordingly, Erdoğan has stated that Turkey’s strategic goal is full European Union membership, and it has also applied to join the BRICS bloc and aims to be a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which the European Council on Foreign Relations has dubbed “rogue NATO.”
Turkey is not only Russia’s second most important trading partner but also the third largest importer of Russian crude oil after China and India.
There is every reason why Turkey should be included on the Republican bill for sanctions. To begin with, its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system in 2019 led to the imposition of Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) sanctions and removal from the F-35 joint strike fighter program. Now Erdoğan is trying to ingratiate himself with Trump to be readmitted. However, Turkey refuses to jettison the S-400 system.
Turkey is also heavily dependent on Russian gas; 40 percent of Turkey’s gas comes from Russia. Three years ago, Erdoğan agreed to Putin’s plan to turn Turkey into a hub for the export of Russian gas to Europe, but Washington blocked this.
Russia is building and financing Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, but the U.S. Justice Department has blocked a $2 billion transfer of Russian money to Turkey due to suspicion of money laundering.
Turkey is not only Russia’s second most important trading partner but also the third largest importer of Russian crude oil after China and India, which it refines and exports to other countries. To cap it all, Turkey is now the major destination for Russian tourists, whom the Turks heartily dislike. If ever there were a candidate for U.S. sanctions on Russia’s trading partners, Turkey should be at the head of the line.
