Erdogan vows to step down if Russia’s IS oil trade claims proven

The Russian president called the downing of the Russian warplane a war crime and said Turkey will regret its actions “more than once”. “It is for Russian Federation and Turkey to come to terms”.

The ministry official showed satellite images purporting to show Daesh members transporting oil from Syria and Iraq to neighboring Turkey.

“We know for example who in Turkey fills their pockets and allows terrorists to make money from the stolen oil in Syria”, Putin said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015.

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”.

As well as the sanctions already put in place, Russian Federation has deployed long-range air defense missile systems to Syria and warned that it would shoot down any aerial threat to its aircraft flying there.

Within this all, the stance taken by the USA is of course vital.

“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 has been appointed energy minister”.

“President Erdogan and his family are involved in this criminal business”, Antonov said. Antonov said Wednesday that figure may be as high as $2 billion. “Obviously, no one but the closest people could be entrusted to control such dealings”.

They said they had identified three main routes for oil from Syria and Iraq into Turkey, most of which they claimed comes from fields near Dier ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

He attacked Turkish leaders for the shooting down of the Russian jet on a bombing mission in Syria, saying “only Allah knows why they did it”.

But President Barack Obama and other senior USA officials have also voiced frustration in recent days at lingering gaps in security along a roughly 100 km (62-mile) stretch of Turkey’s border with Syrian territory controlled by Islamic State.

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has rejected as “Soviet-style propaganda”, Russian allegations that Ankara is in league with militants to smuggle oil. “We just don’t believe that to be true in any way, shape or form”. He said the Russian air raids have destroyed 32 oil production facilities, 11 refineries and 1,080 oil trucks since they began on September 30.

The claims are the latest in a feud between Russia and Turkey after a Russian jet was shot down by Turkey. The Russian pilot who survived the incident denied the plane was over Turkey, and Putin called the incident a “stab in the back”.

Erdogan has voiced regret over the incident, but Putin has made it clear that he expects a formal apology.