US President Donald Trump said regarding the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), ‘I can say that we could lift the sanctions.’ Trump, who arrived in Ankara to attend the 36th NATO Heads of State and Government Summit, made remarks at the Presidential Complex hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Trump said, ‘Turkey has become a very strong country militarily under your leadership (President Erdoğan).’ WHAT ARE CAATSA SANCTIONS? The sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which had been on the table for about three years due to Turkey’s purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia, entered into force on April 7, 2021.
The US Congress had approved CAATSA in 2017. For the first time, in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the 2018 defense budget, Congress raised Turkey’s intention to purchase S-400s from Russia and requested a report on the matter from the Department of Defense.
The Department submitted the report to Congress in November 2018, noting that Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 was certain and that its negative impact on US-Turkey bilateral relations and Turkey’s role within NATO would be inevitable. In response, in the NDAA for the 2019 defense budget, Congress imposed restrictions on the delivery of F-35 aircraft to Turkey.
In the NDAA for the 2020 budget, Turkey’s receipt of the S-400 systems in July 2019 was defined as a ‘significant transaction’ with the Russian defense and intelligence sector under CAATSA, and it was requested that the President impose at least five of the CAATSA sanctions on Turkey within 180 days.
Under the CAATSA law, the US State Department had published a list of sanctioned Russian defense and intelligence companies on October 27, 2017, and the Almaz-Antey Air and Space Defense Corporation, which produces the S-400 systems, was second on the list.
Therefore, although CAATSA sanctions against Turkey had been verbally mentioned since 2017, they officially appeared for the first time in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, which was enacted in December 2019.
