“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today said Turkey had proof Russia was involved in illegal oil trade with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, countering “immoral” Russian allegations that his own family was importing oil from the jihadists”.
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In today’s speech, Putin branded Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet a “treacherous war crime” and said Turkey was responsible for the “murder of our people” and accused it of buying oil from Isis – a claim Turkey denies.
Delivering his annual state of the nation address on Thursday, Putin said Russian Federation will not ignore what he described as Turkey’s “aiding of terrorists”.
Putin further evoked the term “Allah”, the Islamic and Arabic word for God, saying the Turkish political elite lacked wisdom and judgement. “And it seems that Allah made a decision to punish the ruling gang in Turkey by stripping it of common sense and reason”.
“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq”, he said, citing photos showing columns of tanker trucks purportedly loading oil at Daesh-controlled installations in the two violence-scarred Middle Eastern states before entering neighboring Turkey.
Turkey said it shot down the plane after it violated its airspace for 17 seconds despite repeated warnings, while Russian Federation has insisted that the aircraft has stayed in Syria’s airspace.
Russian Federation has repeatedly been making the claim that Turkey buys oil from ISIL since the incident near the Turkey-Syria border.
“We will not stop reminding them of what they did and they will not stop regretting their actions”.
“We don’t want any sabre-rattling, but if somebody thinks they can get away with this with tomatoes and restrictions on construction workers, they are wrong”.
He imposed sanctions against Turkey Saturday, targeting mostly food imports, abolishing a visa free travel agreement and restricting work permissions.
He also said his country would have liked to cooperate with Turkey on fighting terrorism before last week’s plane incident.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to hold talks later Thursday with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of a conference in Belgrade after Putin on Monday snubbed Erdogan at the United Nations climate summit in Paris.
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“There was a Soviet propaganda machine in the Cold War era”, Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.
