‘Allah is punishing’ Turkey’s rulers: Vladimir Putin

Turkey neither intends to escalate the situation regarding the downing of the Russian warplane, nor would apologize to Russia for the incident, Davutoglu said at Azerbaijan’s ADA University here, pointing out that Russia’s accusations of Turkey stabbing Moscow in the back are groundless.

U.S. special envoy and coordinator for global energy affairs, Amos Hochstein, on Saturday said the amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from areas of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group is “of no significance from a volume perspective both volume of oil and volume of revenue”.

“We know who are stuffing pockets in Turkey and letting terrorists prosper from the sale of oil they stole in Syria”, Putin said while addressing the Kremlin audience on December 3.

The ministry claimed Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his family are involved in selling illegal oil. “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 incident with the Russian Su-24 bomber shot down by Turkish warplanes near the Turkish-Syrian border has greatly deteriorated relations between the two countries.

Putin opened his address with a call for a minute’s silence to honour the Russian pilot killed in the Turkish attack.

Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia’s National Center for Control of Defense, said the Defense Ministry would unveil more information next week about arms sales and terrorist training on Turkish soil, according to Pravda. “I guess Allah chose to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by stripping it of their sanity”.

Davutoglu said the county does not have enough money and asked the United States to partially fund the initiative.

Those who were stunned by Turkey’s action might now have a better understanding why Canada’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally would take such an extreme step against a country also involved in global efforts to defeat ISIS.

The spokesman advised the American side to have a look through the videos, which were also presented by the Russian Defense Ministry, showing “how the tanker trucks not only drive through checkpoints at the Turkish border, but pass through them without even stopping.

A Russian pilot, Oleg Peshkov, was shot down by militants on the ground in Syria after he bailed out of the plane.

On the sidelines of a global climate change conference near Paris on Monday, Putin said the downing of the plane was a “huge mistake”.

“Modern Russian weapons have worked efficiently, and the priceless experience of its use in combat will be analyzed to help further improve our weapons”, he said.

Almost four million Russians visited Turkey past year, with all-inclusive packages costing as little as 460 euros.