Reports in the past from Turkey’s border with Syria have repeatedly said that Islamic State was smuggling oil, a key source of its revenues, to underground dealers in Turkey.
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Puttin said he believed the decision to shoot down the Russian figher was meant to cover up Turkish involvement in the IS oil trade, sparking a furious response from Erdogan.
“If you look at the map, it looks like ISIS is smuggling oil through Kurdish-controlled territories in both Iraq and Syria to Turkey”, Kurdish expert Wladimir van Wilgenburg, of the Jamestown Foundation, told Business Insider on Wednesday.
U.S. President Barack Obama said Tuesday that while Turkey has a right to defend itself and its sovereignly, the Turks and Russians should cool down and remember that they have a common enemy – Islamic State. “According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business”, he said.
“What a great family business!”
Defense ministry officials showed journalists satellite images that they claimed depicted thousands of trucks carrying oil from areas of Syria and Iraq under IS control. “Everyone needs to know this”, Erdogan said.
Broaching the subject of elections in Syria, Assad said, “When there’s election, the Syrian people will decide if they want me, I’ll be happy to be president; if they don’t want me, I’ll be happy to leave it, I don’t have any problem”.
“He [Putin] has [said] many words about me as an honest head of state”, Erdogan said.
Russian Federation supplies Turkey with more than half of its natural gas supplies but Erdogan said he was not troubled by the risk of Russian Federation cutting down exports. Erdoğan has said in the past that he would resign if such accusations against him were proven, the Associated Press reported.
Officials at the briefing said the Islamic State was earning $3 million a day from the trade, but that figure had been halved after the Russian airstrikes began.
He also raised the spectre of Afghanistan in warning Russian Federation against getting bogged down in its military campaign to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Even as Moscow released its latest salvo of allegations, Lavrov agreed to meet his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu at a conference in Belgrade later this week for the first time since the downing. The leaders are in Paris for the United Nations climate change summit when they held talks on the sidelines.
Russia also took steps to restrict Russians from traveling to Turkey, which could hit the Turkish tourism industry hard.
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Turkey shot down a Russian bomber in its air space on November 24, the first known incident of its kind since the Cold War and one that has deeply strained ties between Turkey and Russia.
