President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a speech by attending the 5th Ordinary Congress of AK Party Headquarters Women's Branches held in Ankara Sports Hall.

Referring to the sanctions of the US Treasury Department in his speech decision, "We will freeze the US Justice and Home Affairs Ministers assets in Turkiye if there are any. There is a nice Arab word: Men Daqqa Duqqa. [What goes around comes around].

President Erdoğan said:

"The mentality behind confiscating the property of my justice and interior ministers in connection with the Bronson's is not a good mentality. It is impossible to accept such an approach towards my ministers who do not own any property in the US. What will happen now? We stayed patient until last night. Today I am giving instructions to freeze the US secretaries of justice and the interior in Turkiye if there are any."

Erdoğan said the Turkish nation will not step back because of "threatening rhetoric and silly decisions" of sanctions. "Turkiye cannot be an item of U.S. domestic politics like it became in Europe. Repeating the faults that Europe did, will not earn America anything," Erdoğan said.

"The channels of diplomacy are working very intensely. I think that we will leave behind a major chunk of differences between us soon," he said, adding that they should sort out the issue rationally.

Erdoğan, however, insisted that Turkiye did not want to see a "lose-lose" scenario emerge in ties with the US.

"We don't want to be a party to lose-lose games. Moving political and judicial disputes into an economic dimension will be harmful to both sides," Erdoğan said.

ILKHA