OREANDA-NEWS The United States is pressuring Turkey to impose sanctions against Russia, Turkish economist Igor Sobral said.

US Deputy Treasury Secretary Brian Nelson will pay a visit to Turkey and the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in order to negotiate Russia's circumvention of Western sanctions imposed against it, Reuters reported earlier, citing a representative of the US Treasury.

"Our economy is based not on planned production, but on unplanned trade. In other words, there is an understanding of an economy based on trade, not on production. There is no plan anyway. The American side is pressuring us to impose an embargo against Russia, but there are no serious sanctions... The President (Tayyip Erdogan) is pursuing his policy towards Russia. He establishes warm relations with Russia. However, the employees with whom he works do not treat Turkey's growing cooperation with Shanghai and the BRICS countries with the same warmth. However, they also understand that the preservation of their positions depends on Erdogan's victory in the elections, and the victory in the elections in these economic conditions depends on the absence of any sanctions against Russia," Aydınlık newspaper quotes the economist as saying.