Erdogan says no one can ‘slander’ Turkey over IS oil claims

Putin had on Monday said the reason Turkey downed a Russian warplane last week was that it wanted to protect supplies of oil from Islamic State.

Antonov continued: “Maybe I’m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one’s closest associates”.

At a press briefing in Moscow, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov pointed to the recent appointment of Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak as energy minister as evidence that Ankara was trying to cover up its oil trade with IS.

“What a great family business!”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was directly accused by Moscow of taking part in the illegal oil trade, has strongly denied the charge.

He said the main consumer of the illegal oil deliveries from Syria and Iraq is Turkey.

Both countries have blamed each other for the incident and Russian Federation introduced a range of trade sanctions against Turkey and President Putin accused his Turkish counterpart of being an accomplice of terrorists.

“We never said oil smuggling from ISIL is not a problem”, he said, using an alternative acronym for IS. Though a key gateway for Islamic State oil smuggling is in the southern corridor of Turkey, Erdoğan has sidestepped any concrete efforts to attack the sales route.

Russia and Turkey suspended talks on their joint TurkStream project to pipe gas to Turkey and southern Europe, Russia’s energy minister said Thursday.

Starting from September 30, Russia’s air campaign in Syria has destroyed 32 oil processing complexes, 11 oil refineries, 23 oil pumping stations and 1,080 oil tank trucks, which slashed profits of terrorists from illegal oil exports from 3 millon dollars to 1.5 million on a daily basis, Sergei Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told the briefing.

From there the columns of tanker trucks pass through the Turkish town of Reyhanli, the ministry said, citing what it said were satellite pictures of hundreds of such trucks moving through the border crossing without obstruction. These vehicles are not checked at the Turkish side of the border. It hopes that closing the border will help sever smuggling ties.

Local media reported that thousands of mourners flocked to bid farewell to Oleg Peshkov, who the defence ministry said was shot dead from the ground after parachuting out of the jet.

“Turkey is taking steps to improve the security of its border with Syria, working with worldwide partners”.