Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has rejected as “Soviet-style propaganda”, Russian allegations that Ankara is in league with militants to smuggle oil.
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In a briefing in Moscow earlier Wednesday, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov called IS the “absolute leader” in worldwide terrorism, and said terrorists in Syria earn around $2 billion a year from the illegal extraction of oil, which they use to recruit and arm terrorists “around the world”.
“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.
Lavrov said his country’s aim is to ensure that the “overflow” of terrorist threats in Turkey don’t make their way into Russian Federation.
President Vladimir Putin said Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military jet was a war crime and that the Kremlin would punish Ankara with additional sanctions, signalling fallout from the incident would be long-lasting and serious.
Speaking at a Qatar University ceremony where he received an Honorary Ph.D.in Doha, Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the allegations about Turkey buying oil from Daesh as “slander”.
Independent researcher and political commentator Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich seized on the subject of state support for Daesh, saying “there is no global coalition” fighting the illicit oil trade.
Invited journalists and military attaches were shown satellite images and grainy video footage, purporting to show tanker trucks with oil crossing from IS-held territory into Turkey.
On November 30 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow has grounds to say that Russian Su-24 aircraft was downed to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey.
The accusations come amid tensions between the two nations after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that it says crossed into its airspace near Syria.
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. “And, most importantly, it is not planning to stop them”. Iraq said on Wednesday that it was prepared to file a complaint with the UN Security Council if Turkey’s role in the illicit oil trade is proven beyond doubt.
On Monday, Erdogan said that he would leave office if there was proof of Turkey’s cooperation in the oil trade with IS.
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“Only Allah knows why they did this”, he added.
