Top Russian military officials on Wednesday accused the Turkish president of personally benefiting from the illegal oil trade with the Islamic State group (ISIS).
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In the photos, columns of tanker trucks can be seen which are purportedly loading oil at installations controlled by Daesh in Syria and Iraq, before entering neighboring Turkey. “In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president’s son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister”.
“What a great family business!”
Vladimir Putin, speaking to reporters after his bilateral meetings with Obama and others, said that Russia has grounds to suspect that the Russian aircraft was downed to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey, TASS reported today.
President Vladimir Putin called on the worldwide community to form a joint front under the United Nations to defeat terrorism, as he lashed out at Turkey over the downing of a Russian warplane.
However, the officials did not provide specific evidence of the involvement of Erdogan or his family in the oil smuggling.
Turkey, a NATO member state, would have the right to claim that an attack by Russian Federation on Turkey is an attack on all NATO members, but considering the order to shoot down the SU-24 was ill conceived and the SU-24 was not a real threat to Turkey, NATO members would do well to tamp down the rhetoric against the grieved party who has lost a pilot and soldiers and never threatened Turkish security to any great measure.
“The Turkish leadership, particularly Erdogan, won’t resign and won’t acknowledge anything even if their faces will be smeared with the stolen oil”, he stressed. “But if someone thinks that after committing heinous war crimes, the murder of our people, it will end with (an embargo on) tomatoes and limitations in construction and other fields then they are deeply mistaken”, Putin said.
The US has also rejected the allegations.
The State Department’s Toner said USA information was that Daesh was selling oil at the wellheads to middlemen who were involved in smuggling it across the frontier into Turkey.
To defeat Islamic State, Antonov says “the sources of its financing have to be crushed”, a view shared by the Obama Administration.
Both ISIL and the PKK are recognised as terrorist groups by Turkey, as well as US, EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Turkey has said it downed the Russian plane after it intruded its airspace for 17 seconds despite numerous warnings, and has refused to apologize for the shoot-down.
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Russian Federation has hit 32 oil complexes, 11 refineries, 23 oil pumping stations, and destroyed 1,080 trucks carrying oil products, according to Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy.
