Turkey has been warned of sanctions from the U.S., including selling real estate to Russians.

Although Ankara is trying to pursue a policy of balance, developments in the economy have long been under scrutiny from the West. According to Kerim Ulker of Dünya, we wrote in this column last year that the Kremlin would face a big embargo from the West and that Turkish companies need to watch the process. We mentioned that crisis sometimes doesn't create opportunity and that Western countries, including the United States, would step up their measures against Russia.

The first warning came in August, when for the past several months European Union newspapers have been reporting that Turkey was not joining the import embargo on Russia and was even behaving flexibly on some issues. The first major step in this direction was a telephone conversation between U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Valle Adeyemo and Turkish counterpart Yunus Yelitaş last August. Immediately afterwards, Adeyemo sent a letter to TÜSİAD and some non-governmental organizations stating the risk of sanctions for companies working with Russian firms under US sanctions. Turkey's leading financial institutions and companies have started taking steps in this direction: Petkim stopped using Russian oil, banks withdrew from the Russian payment system MIR.

These steps were not considered sufficient by Washington, however, and interesting developments have taken place over the past few days. The first new development was published on the official website of the U.S. Treasury Department. The report, which received widespread U.S. media coverage, focused on Aviacon Zytotrans, which the report said was trying to use a Turkish company and Turkish diplomats to facilitate the sale of Russian arms to Rosoboronexport, a state-controlled Russian defense company on the U.S. sanctions list. The second major step on the U.S. side was a visit to Turkey by Treasury Secretary Brian Nelson on sanctions issues against Russia.

Nelson met with government and banking industry officials and spoke about the risk of losing access to the G7 market for Turkish companies and banks working with sanctioned Russian entities. Nelson recalled that second-tier exports of products from Turkey to Russia have recently increased significantly and that this poses a threat to Turkey's private sector due to sanctions. Also, Reuters published an interesting article a few days ago. According to a U.S.

Ankara's attitude to seeing Sweden in NATO is not generating positive reactions in both the US and the EU. These countries, which have limited their response to Russian sanctions, will make their own demands regarding Turkey's participation in the Russian embargo. It will also force Ankara to take more decisive steps. It is particularly important for Turkey's business community to see the crisis as an opportunity and to trade on the brink of sanctions. A crisis is often perceived only as a crisis. After all, before you go to Dimyat, you need to think about bulgur at home. We haven't solved the problem of sanctions against Iran yet...

Havaş discontinues service in Russia

Havaş, which maintains ground services at Turkish airports, has taken an important step to avoid problems with secondary embargoes. Havaş sent a letter to Russian and Belarusian airlines saying it may stop servicing U.S. planes they use to comply with U.S. export controls because of the war in Ukraine. Havaş officials confirmed this information and also advised Russian airlines to schedule their flights with aircraft using less than 25 percent American technology.

Despite Turkey's political statement on the need to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity in the international arena, steps taken by the private sector in the economy are causing problems. For example, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's spokesman, who has been the only permanent face in his entourage since 2000, became one of the first Russian officials to face U.S. sanctions in the first week of the war. The cooperation with the Turkish entrepreneur and the creation of the company, which was carried out by Nikolai Peskov, Dmitry Peskov's son, and which Washington has been watching for a long time, was of interest. According to the latest reports, Peskov's son and his Turkish partner were in talks about doing business in Turkey, but they failed.