U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday that President Donald Trump had authorized U.S. officials to draft "very significant" new sanctions to target Turkey after it launched an offensive in northeast Syria, adding that banks were being notified.
Mnuchin said the United States was not activating the sanctions at this time but would do so if necessary.
"We are putting financial institutions on notice that they should be careful and that there could be sanctions," Mnuchin said.
"These are very powerful sanctions. We hope we don't have to use them, but we can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to," Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin said Trump was concerned about Turkey's potential targeting of civilians and wants to make clear that Turkey cannot "allow even a single Daesh fighter to escape."
Turkey on Wednesday launched Operation Peace Spring east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria to secure its borders by eliminating terrorist elements and to ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees and Syria's territorial integrity.
Ankara wants to eliminate terrorist elements from the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the PYD-YPG.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union -- has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
Turkey has a 911-kilometer (566-mile) border with Syria and has long decried the threat from terrorists east of the Euphrates River and the formation of a "terrorist corridor" there.
It plans to resettle two million Syrians in a 30-km (19-mile) wide proposed safe zone in Syria stretching from the Euphrates River to the Iraqi border, including Manbij. However, the presence of terror groups such as the PKK, PYD and YPG risk its formation.
Turkey has freed an area of 4,000 square km (1,544 square miles) in Syria from terrorist groups in two separate cross-border operations.
Since 2016, Turkey has conducted two major military operations in northwestern Syria -- Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch -- to eradicate threats from Daesh and the YPG, which is the Syrian branch of the PKK terrorist group.
