Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From
ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has "More Proof"
By Tyler Durden
December 01, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Zero
Hedge" - “I’ve shown photos taken
from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of
the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” Vladimir Putin
told reporters earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20
summit in Antalya. Putin was of course referencing Islamic State’s
illicit and highly lucrative oil trade, the ins and outs of which
we’ve documented extensively over the past two weeks:
Turkey’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24
warplane near the Syrian border afforded the Russian President all
the motivation and PR cover he needed to expose Ankara’s alleged
role in the trafficking of illegal crude from Iraq and Syria and in
the aftermath of last Tuesday’s “incident,” Putin lambasted Erdogan.
“Oil from Islamic State is being shipped to
Turkey,” Putin said while in Jordan for a meeting with King
Abdullah. In case that wasn’t clear enough, Putin added this: “Islamic
State gets cash by selling oil to Turkey.”
To be sure, it’s impossible to track the path ISIS
oil takes from extraction to market with any degree of precision.
That said, it seems that Islamic State takes advantage of the same
network of smugglers, traders, and shipping companies that the KRG
uses to transport Kurdish crude from Kurdistan to the Turkish port
of Ceyhan.
From there, the oil makes its way to Israel and
other markets (depending on which story you believe) and if anyone
needs to be thrown off the trail along the way, there’s a
ship-to-ship transfer trick that can be executed off the coast of
Malta. The maneuver allegedly makes the cargoes more difficult
to track.
Some believe Erdogan’s son Bilal - who owns a
marine transport company called BMZ Group - is heavily involved in
the trafficking of Kurdish and ISIS crude. Most of the ships BMZ
owns are Malta-flagged.
In light of the above, some have speculated that
Turkey shot down the Su-24 in retaliation for Russia’s bombing
campaign that recently has destroyed over 1,000 ISIS oil trucks.
Here’s what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoub said
on Friday:
“All of the oil was delivered to a
company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This
is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering
airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than
500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his
company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and
historic artefacts as well.”
Al-Zoub isn’t alone in his suspicions. In an
interview with RT, Iraqi MP and former national security
adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie - who personally led Saddam to the
gallows - said ISIS is selling around $100 million of stolen crude
each month in Turkey. Here are some excerpts:
“In the last eight months
ISIS has managed to sell … $800 million dollars worth of
oil on the black market of Turkey. This
is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from
Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold
…[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil
price.”
“Now this either get consumed inside,
the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish
refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes
to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the
Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”
“Money and dollars generated by selling
Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the
oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you
cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”
“There isn't a shadow of a doubt
that the Turkish government knows about the oil smuggling
operations. The merchants, the
businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under
the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish
intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus.”
“There are security officers who are
sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go
from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate … Syria and Iraq.”
“There is no terrorist organization
which can stand alone, without a neighboring country helping it
– in this case Turkey.”
That's pretty unequivocal. But it gets better.
On Monday, Putin was back at it, saying that
Russia has obtained new information that further implicates Turkey
in the Islamic State oil trade. “At the moment we have
received additional information confirming that that oil from the
deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish
territory on industrial scale,” Putin said on the sidelines
of the climate change summit in Paris. “We have traced some located
on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions
guarded by special security services and police that have used the
visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to
fight them.”
“We have every reason to believe that the
decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security
of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are
shipped in tankers,” he added, taking it up another notch still.
As for Erdogan, well, he “can't accept” the
accusations which he calls “not moral”:
- ERDOGAN: TURKEY CAN'T ACCEPT RUSSIA CLAIMS
THAT IT BUYS IS OIL
Hilariously, the man who just finished starting a
civil war just so he could regain a few lost seats in Parliament and
who would just as soon throw you in jail as look at you if he thinks
you might be a threat to his government, now says he will resign if
Putin (or anyone else) can present “proof”: “We are not that
dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven
that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If
there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider [it].”
Hold your breath on that.
And so, the Turkey connection has been exposed and
in dramatic fashion. Unfortunately for Ankara, Erdogan can't arrest
Vladimir Putin like
he can award winning journalists and honest police officers who,
like Moscow, want to see the flow of money and weapons to Sunni
militants in Syria cut off.
The real question is how NATO will react now that
Turkey is quickly becoming a liability. Furthermore, you can be sure
that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (who are all heavily invested
in the Sunni extremist cause in Syria), are getting nervous. No one
wants to see this blown wide open as that would mean the Western
public getting wise to the fact that it is indeed anti-ISIS
coalition governments that are funding and arming not only ISIS, but
also al-Nusra and every other rebel group fighting to wrest control
of the country from Assad.
Worse, if it gets out that the reason the US has
refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks until now is due to the fact
that Ankara and Washington had an understanding when it comes to the
flow of illicit crude to Cehyan, the American public may just insist
on indicting “some folks.”
Remember, when it comes to criminal conspiracies,
the guy who gets caught first usually ends up getting cut loose. It
will be interesing to see if Erdogan starts to get the cold shoulder
from Ankara's “allies” going forward.
