Earlier this week, Putin accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his country’s government of enabling the rise of the Islamic State by buying oil smuggled from Syria.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin used his state of the nation speech on Thursday to threaten further reprisals against Turkey, as the clash continued to escalate between the two countries over the downing a Russian warplane and death of two Russian servicemen last month.
He added: “And evidently Allah made a decision to punish the ruling clique in Turkey, by depriving it of any reason or logic”.
“Russia is Turkey’s biggest natural gas supplier but it is not the only one”, Erdogan said while addressing the Turkey Innovation Week in Istanbul.
“Of course we have different views but we need to continue to talk in order to narrow our differences”, Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolia news agency.
“If anyone thinks that having committed this despicable war crime, the murder of our people, they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or restrictions on their construction and other sectors, they are profoundly mistaken”, he told the audience in the Kremlin.
At the same time, the USA confirmed that oil trade between Islamic State and some buyers on Turkish territory does exist, as its officials admitted that small amounts of oil could, in fact, be crossing the Turkish-Syrian border in tanker trucks, though they claimed the volume is “of no significance”.
A video by journalist Levent Kemal captures the moment flames engulf the truck, allegedly carrying ISIS oil, after it was hit by the Russians. “According to information we have received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business”, Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov said.
“We are at a point where we do not want to be right now”, said Cavusoglu.
Antonov didn’t say how much oil was involved in the suspected IS trade with Turkey, but another ministry official stressed that the quantity would be greater today if Russian Federation hadn’t begun its operations against IS – also called ISIS and Daesh – on September 30, greatly cutting into the group’s revenues from oil smuggling. We have many friends in Turkey, he said.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu speaks to the media during a visit to northern Cyprus, December 1, 2015.
One of the plane’s pilots was killed, while another was rescued.
The top USA priority is for Turkey to secure its southern border with Syria, the first official said.
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Ties between Ankara and Moscow soured after a Russian SU-24 bomber was shot down by a Turkish F-16 along the Syrian-Turkish border, allegedly for violating Turkish airspace.
