Putin and ErdoganIt is the latest in a series of claims Russian Federation has made about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family firms enjoying trade ties with IS. Russian Federation has responded by deploying long-range air defense missiles at its air base in Syria and slamming Turkey with an array of economic sanctions.
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Russia and Turkey have in recent days traded allegations that they are involved in the illegal trade, further ratcheting up tensions after Turkish jets downed a Russian bomber on the Syrian border.
At a briefing in Moscow, defence ministry officials displayed satellite images which they said showed columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at installations controlled by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and then crossing the border into neighboring Turkey. Antonov claimed that “terrorists in Syria” earned $2 billion from the illegal oil trade and “that is why IS so protects its thieving oil extraction infrastructure in Syria and Iraq”. “Obviously, no one but the closest people could be entrusted to control such dealings”.
“What a great family business!”
A Russian parliament member, Vasily Likachev, told state news agency Tass that Moscow has sufficient evidence on oil sales to file a claim with the UN International Court of Justice.
“We never said oil smuggling from ISIL is not a problem”, he said, using an alternative acronym for IS.
“The immoral side of this issue is involving my family in the affair”, Mr Erdogan added.
USA state department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday that Washington rejected the premise that the Turkish government was in league with the militants to smuggle oil, saying it saw no evidence to support such an accusation.
“Today we are presenting only part of the facts in our possession, that there is a unified team of bandits and the Turkish elite working in the region to steal oil from its neighbours”, Antonov said at the packed press conference in the defence ministry.
Turkey has said it downed the Russian plane after it intruded its airspace for 17 seconds despite numerous warnings, and has refused to apologize for the shoot-down.
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Davutoglu also renewed an accusation that Russian operations in Syria were hampering efforts to clear Turkey’s border of IS militants. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on parachute and also killed a Russian marine who was involved in rescuing the plane’s co-pilot. On Wednesday, the Turkish president said he would step down if the allegations were proven true.
