After sanctions, Congress committee criticizes Turkey over six policies

The US House foreign affairs committee criticized Turkey’s government on Wednesday, singling out six of Ankara’s policies that “undermine the NATO alliance”.

Departing Democratic committee chairman Eliot Engel and the leading Republican on the committee, Michael McCaul, expressed “grave concern” over relations with Turkey.

“While we continue to see real value in a strong US-Turkey relationship, its destabilizing actions need to be more strongly addressed,” they said in a joint statement.

“And the United States must work with its European and NATO allies and partners to continue to use all of the tools at their disposal to demand that Turkey reverse course.”

They mentioned six policy areas that they hoped Turkey would reverse.

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The first was its acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile defence system, which “compromises NATO interoperability and undermines the alliance’s collective defence pledge”.

On Monday, the Trump administration took an unprecedented step in imposing sanctions on Ankara over buying and testing the S-400 system from Moscow.

The statement also referred to Turkey’s military operation in north-east Syria, which it claimed “risked reversing critical gains by the United States and our local partners in the ongoing counter-ISIS fight, and exacerbated the existing humanitarian crisis”.

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