However, closing the border along the area controlled by Daesh would create obstacles for smuggling the oil Turkey buys from the terrorists.
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Following the downing of a Russian warplane that violated Turkey’s airspace near the Syrian border on November 24, Russia announced sanctions against Turkey and President Vladimir Putin has alleged Turkish involvement in oil purchases from IS. “It was in Turkey that terrorists from the north Caucasus used to find refuge, and some of them are still there”, he said.
Putin specifically targeted Turkey, accusing it of “allowing terrorists to earn money by selling oil stolen from Syria”.
“For that money the bandits are recruiting mercenaries, buying weapons and staging cruel terror attacks aimed against our citizens, as well as citizens of France, Lebanon, Mali and other countries”, he said.
The Russian defense ministry on Wednesday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of profiting from illegal shipments of oil by IS the terrorist group in Syria.
Ankara claims the plane was in its airspace and ignored repeated warnings but Moscow insists it never crossed the border from Syria. He said that Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet at the border with Syria was a “treacherous war crime”.
But Mr Putin has gone on the offensive again, saying that: “Only Allah knows why they did it. And I guess Allah made a decision to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by stripping it of its sanity”.
“We will remind them not once about what they have done, and they will feel sorry about it a couple of times”, he said without spelling out what other actions Russian Federation may take.
Putin’s comments came a day after Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said he was ready to meet his Turkish counterpart on the sidelines of a two-day Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference in Belgrade.
Erdogan strongly denied the allegations, telling an audience Wednesday at Qatar University that “no one has the right to slander Turkey, especially the slander of Turkey buying ISIS oil….” Islamic State claimed responsibility for downing a Russian tourist plane in Egypt in October, killing 224.
“No one gives credit to the lies of the Soviet propaganda machine”, Davutolgu said in Ankara before departing to Azerbaijan.
Top Defence Ministry officials also accused Erdogan and his family of personally benefiting from the oil trade with the IS, although they didn’t provide any evidence to back the claim.
But they are rival players in the war in Syria, with Ankara part of a US-led coalition against IS that is opposed to President Bashar al-Assad while Moscow has launched a bombing campaign at the request of the Damascus regime.
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Thousands of Russian citizens from Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere have joined the Islamic State group in Syria.
