“Turkey does not have any decision to impose any sanctions on Russian Federation”, the Turkish diplomat said.
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Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov and his colleagues on Wednesday showed foreign defense attaches based in Moscow satellite images purporting to show IS transporting oil to Turkey.
“What a marvelous family business!” said Antonov sarcastically.
He said that oil “is transported to Turkey (from Islamic State territory) in industrial quantities along the “rolling pipelines” made up of thousands of tanker trucks”. We will remind them what they did a couple of times. He was speaking after the Russian defence ministry claimed Erdogan and his family were involved in the illegal oil trade with IS, raising the stakes in a week-long standoff after Turkey shot down a Russian war plane on the Syrian border.
A third route took oil from eastern Syria and western Iraq into the south-eastern corner of Turkey, the ministry said.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not admit to profiting from oil deals with terrorists even if his face is “smeared with smuggled oil”, Antonov said.
Tensions between the countries have flared since the downing, with Putin describing the act as “a stab in the back by the terrorists’ accomplices”.
And before setting of on a trip to Azerbaijan the the Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Russian Federation is employing old Iron Curtain tactics. Turkish government will repeatedly regret its action, Putin said.
“Notably his emphasis on terrorism and fighting terrorism in a world full of terrorism, underlines the attack on Russian values, and makes it clear the likes of Turkey are either with Russia or with the terrorists”.
“I think Russian Federation is also very important for the situation, for the balance and also for the responsibility, and therefore the idea of broad coalition is very interesting, and should be taken seriously, and taken seriously in account to accept it”, Austrian Freedom Party’s Franz Obermayr said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has signed a decree imposing economic sanctions on Ankara over the incident, has said Turkey shot down the jet because it wanted to protect supplies of oil from Islamic State militants.
Turkey claims the plane breached its airspace and ignored repeated warnings but Russian Federation insists it never crossed the border from Syria and accused Ankara of a planned provocation.
After the shooting of the Russian plane, which caused the death of one pilot, the Turkish President told journalists today that problems such as the one between Turkey and Russia “should be solved diplomatically”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he offered his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, Turkey’s condolences over the death of a Russian pilot.
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“Only Allah knows why they did this”, Mr Putin said yesterday in his state-of-the-nation address, drawing applause from his audience at the Kremlin.
