Russia says Turkish leader profits from militants’ oil

Earlier, Russia had upped the ante in a war of words with Ankara that began last week when Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border.

We will remind them what they did a few times.

The presentation was light on direct connections to Erdogan’s family, though with his family so deeply involved in Turkey’s energy industry, simply tracking the oil from ISIS territory to refineries inside Turkey is likely a start toward that end.

The Defence Ministry stressed that Turkey is the final destination for oil smuggled from Syria and Iraq.

“According to available information, the highest level of the political leadership of the country, president Erdogan and his family, are involved in this criminal business”. “Obviously no one but the closest people could be entrusted to control such things [as oil bought from IS]”.

“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”, Antonov said.

“What a marvelous family business!” said Antonov sarcastically. The Russian leader refused to meet with Erdogan at a global climate in Paris, which they both attended Monday. Look what they’re doing.

They say the satellite pictures reveal there are no inspections carried out on the vehicles.

Erdogan has rejected Putin’s demands to apologise over the incident, saying that Turkey was acting well within its rights to protect its border.

Erdogan has said Ankara is taking steps to prevent fuel smuggling, and he challenged anyone who accused his government of collaborating with Islamic State to prove their allegations. Russian officials assert the alleged arrangement financially benefits not only ISIS but also Turkey’s ruling elite.

“I don’t understand why they did that…Only Allah knows why they did that”.

Thousands of Russian citizens from Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere have joined the Islamic State group in Syria. “After two months of Russian air strikes their income was about $1.5m (£1m) a day”, he said.

The Russian charges were also dismissed by the White House, whose spokesman criticized Russian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom he said is “the largest consumer of ISIL oil”.

A Russian parliament member, Vasily Likachev, told state news agency Tass that Moscow has sufficient evidence on oil sales to file a claim with the UN International Court of Justice.

Erdogan said Turkey was pushing for a diplomatic resolution for the crisis to stop further damage to its ties with Moscow but warned that it could retaliate against further retaliatory measures.