U.S. President Donald Trump said there was no obstacle to lifting CAATSA sanctions on Türkiye, as he reiterated his friendship with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Oct. 2, Trump was asked by CNN Türk’s U.S. correspondent Yunus Paksoy why the sanctions remained in place despite his pledge to remove them at the NATO summit in July.
“I’ll always speak to President Erdoğan. He is a friend of mine, as you know. And I’ll always make him happy,” Trump said.
He gave no timetable for lifting the measures.
During talks with Erdoğan in Ankara on July 7, Trump said Washington would remove the sanctions.
“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off. It’s time to do that,” he said at the time. “We don’t want to sanction friends.”
Washington imposed the sanctions on Türkiye’s Defense Industries Agency (SSB) and several officials in December 2020 over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems. The measures were introduced under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, known as CAATSA.
