“We know who in Turkey is filling their pockets and allowing terrorists to profit from oil stolen from Syria”.
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“If someone thinks they can commit a heinous war crime, kill our people and get away with it, suffering nothing but a ban on tomato imports, or a few restrictions in construction or other industries, they’re delusional”, the Russian leader said.
Putin further evoked the term “Allah”, the Islamic and Arabic word for God, saying the Turkish political elite lacked wisdom and judgement. “It seems Allah made a decision to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by relieving them of their sense and judgement”, he said.
The speech comes after accusations from Putin and the Russian government the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government had traded smuggled oil with the Islamic State group.
Relations between the two countries have been deteriorating since Turkey shot down the Russian military plane near the Syrian border last month after claims it entered their airspace.
“Russia’s Sovietic stance – that we thought it had forgotten – is coming back bit-by-bit”, he said.
The Russian president in his statement said why Turkey downed the Russian Su-24 jet: “I can’t understand why Turkey took this step”.
He also censured “part of the leadership in Turkey” which engages in trade with terrorist groups in Syria and neighboring Iraq and is responsible for the Russian pilot’s death.
“We shall remind them many a time what they have done and they will more than once feel regret what they have done”. Recently, Russia accused Ankara of buying illegal oil from militants in Syria and transporting it to three ports across the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkey’s allegations against Russian came after Moscow had accused Turkey of having been involved in oil trader with ISIS.
Negotiations over the project to pipe Russian gas to Turkey under the Black Sea have been floundering since Moscow launched air strikes in Syria in late September in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which Ankara fiercely opposes.
The Russian Defense Ministry provided evidence of Turkey buying and transporting illegal oil, including images of oil-carrying tank trucks near the border.
The Russian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Belgrade on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting – the first senior-level meeting since the incident – but the exchange was frosty.
“There was a Soviet propaganda machine in the Cold War era”, Davutoglu told reporters at an Ankara airport before leaving for Azerbaijan on an official visit.
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Prime Minister David Cameron has said he believes British warplanes, which have been bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq for more than a year, should also be tackling the group in Syria rather than “sub-contract” United Kingdom security to other countries.
