Turkey claims Russia’s trading oil with IS

However, Russia says as much as 200,000 barrels of oil per day is smuggled to Turkey by Islamic State, which equals the average daily oil export of Gabon in 2014 or Australia in 2013, according to an OPEC annual statistical bulletin. “Actually, Russia does not believe this either”, said Erdogan, referring to the alleged oil trade with IS group.

He said Russian Federation had made “no sign” yet that the crisis would affect their energy partnership, including joint work on the Akkuyu nuclear plant in southern Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also underscored that if the border is closed Ankara will not be able to accept refugees from Syria.

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.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied the Russian claim.

Russia, for its part, has since threatened economic sanctions against Turkey, which includes the stoppage of an agreement for a pipeline that would have provided natural gas to Turkey. Turkey insists the plane had violated its airspace, but Russian Federation vehemently rejects that contention.

A Russian Defense Ministry official said Wednesday that there were three main routes for transporting Islamic State oil into Turkey and displayed stills and video footage of what he said were trucks shipping IS oil on these routes.

In his first state of the nation address after Russian Federation launched military intervention in Syria against ISIS, Vladimir Putin kept his focus on Turkey rather than terrorism.

“Turkey is not a country which will collapse with your… one billion dollar imports”, he declared. “Let us not abuse campaigns like ‘Turkey backs ISIL, ‘ which remind the Cold War period, against each other”. “We will stand firm”.

“We continued to export goods”.

Meanwhile, Russia has also said that its airstrikes in Syria since late September had destroyed 32 oil processing complexes, 11 oil refineries, 23 oil pumping stations and 1,080 oil tank trucks.

“We must leave all arguments and disagreements behind and make one powerful fist, a single anti-terror front, which would work on the basis of global law under the aegis of the United Nations”, he said, addressing lawmakers and top officials who had gathered in an ornate Kremlin hall. We are speaking a diplomatic language.

“We expressed our sadness and expressed our condolences for the Russian pilot who lost his life”, Turkish media quoted Cavusoglu as saying after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Belgrade, in the first high-level contact between the two sides since the incident on November 24.