“At the direction of President Trump we will be targeting specific Turkish individuals or departments as needed,” he said in a published statement. “This is a notice to banks and other parties to be on notice of potential actions.”
The purpose of the sanctions will be to compel Turkey to end its cross-border military offensive, including “indiscriminate targeting of civilians, targeting of civilian infrastructure, targeting of ethnic or religious minorities, or targeting or other actions that undermine the continued counterterrorism activities of the Syrian Democratic Forces,” read the Treasury statement.
Turkey launched its Operation Peace Spring on Wednesday, shelling towns and borders along its border with northeastern Syria in order to push the Kurdish-led SDF back from the frontier and set up a so-called safe zone. Trump is accused of giving Ankara the green light for the offensive when he pulled US troops back from outposts on the border.
Facing a backlash at home and abroad, Trump subsequently threatened to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey” if Ankara did anything he considers “off limits.”
Mnuchin reiterated that the sanctions would be devastating, if imposed. “We hope we don’t have to use them, but we can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” he told reporters in Washington.
Turkey considers the SDF a terror organization and its military operation a security necessity. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he will not stop the operation.
“Whatever some may say, we will not stop this step that we have taken,” he said in an address in Istanbul, before Mnuchin’s announcement. “We will continue this fight until all the terrorists go south of the 32-kilometre limit from our border that Mr. Trump himself mentioned,” he said, referring to the “safe zone” Turkey and the US were working to establish together along the border between Turkey and Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry reacted to the threat of US sanctions, saying they will respond “tit-for-tat," Anadolu Agency reported.
