Erdogan denies proven oil links with Isis
As Cameron & Benn Know – Turkey prefers ISIS to the Kurds
Yesterday in response to the allegation of Vladimir Putin that Turkey was actively complicit in buying oil from ISIS President Erdogan challenged him to prove it and if he couldn’t to stand down.
The ISIS - Turkey oil route
In turn Erdogan promised to stand down if Putin could prove it.
I suspect neither will resign but the evidence is quite clear. Below is the response of the Russian Government to the challenge thrown down by Erdogan.
Tony Greenstein
Erdogan keeps out the oil
The relationship hinted at by Russian leader after warplane was shot down is a complex one, and includes links between senior Isis figures and Turkish officials
Bilal Erdogan - in charge of the oil trade with ISIS
Since the earliest months of the Syrian war,
Turkey has had more direct involvement and more at stake than any of the regional states lined up against Bashar al-Assad.
Turkish borders have been the primary thoroughfare for fighters of all kinds to enter
Syria . Its military bases have been used to distribute weapons and to train rebel fighters. And its frontier towns and villages have taken in almost one million refugees.
Turkey’s international airports have also been busy. Many, if not most, of the estimated 15,000-20,000 foreign fighters to have joined
Islamic State (Isis) have first flown into Istanbul or Adana, or arrived by ferry along its Mediterranean coast.
The influx has offered fertile ground to allies of Assad who, well before a Turkish jet shot down a Russian fighter on Tuesday, had claimed Turkey had enabled or even supported Isis.
Vladimir Putin’s reference to Turkey as “accomplices of terrorists” is likely to resonate even among some of Ankara’s backers.
Protest in Parliament Square
From midway through 2012, when jihadis started to travel to Syria, their presence was apparent at all points of the journey to the border: at Istanbul airport, in the southern cities of Hatay and Gaziantep – both of which were staging points – and in the border villages. Foreigners on their way to fight remained fixtures on these routes until late in 2014 when, after continued pressure from the EU states and the US, coordinated efforts were made to turn them back.Syrian oil map - the ourney of a barrel
By then, Isis had become a dominant presence in parts of north and east Syria. It had splintered non-ideological factions of the Syrian opposition as well as Islamist groups, both of which had been backed by Turkey, and ensured that whatever form of governance that emerged from Syria’s ruins would have little to do with the revolution’s original goals.Turkey shot down Russian aircraft to protect oil supplies
The steady stream of foreigners who passed through Hatay and Gaziantep made little effort to remain discreet, gathering regularly in local hotels, coffee shops and bus stations. European diplomats alarmed by the gathering threat concluded that the Turkish leadership was sympathetic to conservative Islamists travelling to fight Assad, who had, until his brutal response to pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 , been a friend of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “After that he became an enemy,” said one western official. “Erdoğan had tried to mentor Assad. But after the crackdown [on demonstrations] he felt insulted by him. And we are where we are today.”'Commercial scale' oil smuggling into Turkey becomes priority target of anti-ISIS strikes. “
As Syria unravelled, Turkey doubled down on its commitment to a range of militant groups, while at the same time appearing to recognise that the jihadis who had passed through their territory were hardly a benign threat. The change in the dialogue with western officials was marked: security officials no longer insisted on the extremists being called “those who abuse religion”. Labelling them “terrorists” in official correspondence was no longer the problem it had been.Despite that, links to some aspects of Isis continued to develop. Turkish businessmen struck lucrative deals with Isis oil smugglers, adding at least $10m (£6.6m) per week to the terror group’s coffers, and replacing the Syrian regime as its main client. Over the past two years several senior Isis members have told the Guardian that Turkey preferred to stay out of their way and rarely tackled them directly.a US special forces raid in eastern Syria , which killed the Isis official responsible for the oil trade, Abu Sayyaf.Europe . The US and Britain have become far less enamoured, but are unwilling to do much about it. The worry in both capitals is that to do so would introduce yet another variable into an already highly volatile region, where alliances, strategies, and implications are constantly changing.“Turkey thought they could control it all,” said one senior western official. “But it got out of their hands. It has come back to bite them in the heart of Ankara [a double suicide bombing in October that was claimed by Isis] and it will haunt them for a long time.” I n the wake of the murderous attacks in Paris , we can expect western heads of state to do what they always do in such circumstances: declare total and unremitting war on those who brought it about. They don’t actually mean it. They’ve had the means to uproot and destroy Islamic State within their hands for over a year now. They’ve simply refused to make use of it. In fact, as the world watched leaders making statements of implacable resolve at the G20 summit in Antalaya , these same leaders are hobnobbing with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , a man whose tacit political, economic, and even military support contributed to Isis’s ability to perpetrate the atrocities in Paris, not to mention an endless stream of atrocities inside the Middle East.How could Isis be eliminated? In the region, everyone knows. All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria, and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. These are, currently, the main forces actually fighting Isis on the ground. They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and oppose every aspect of Isis’s reactionary ideology.Turkey , and PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdoğan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting Isis; there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding Isis itself.does support the Syrian branch of al-Qaida (Jabhat al-Nusra) too, along with any number of other rebel groups that share its conservative Islamist ideology. The Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University has compiled a long list of evidence of Turkish support for Isis in Syria.How has Erdoğan got away with this? Mainly by claiming those fighting Isis are ‘terrorists' themselves Kobani and Gire Spi , were poised to seize Jarablus, the last Isis-held town on the Turkish border that the terror organisation had been using to resupply its capital in Raqqa with weapons, materials, and recruits – Isis supply lines pass directly through Turkey.Erdoğan reacted by declaring Jarablus a “red line” : if the Kurds attacked, his forces would intervene militarily – against the YPG. So Jarablus remains in terrorist hands to this day, under de facto Turkish military protection.Yazidi civilians threatened with genocide by Isis in 2014, and its sister organisation, the YPG, of protecting Christian communities in Syria as well. Their strategy focuses on pursuing peace talks with the government, while encouraging local democratic autonomy in Kurdish areas under the aegis of the HDP, originally a nationalist political party, which has reinvented itself as a voice of a pan-Turkish democratic left.
‘Bloody terrorist bombings inside Turkey seemed to target civilian activists associated with the HDP. Victims have repeatedly reported police preventing ambulances evacuating the wounded, or even opening fire on survivors with tear gas .’ Photograph: Murat Bay/AFP/Getty
HDP success at the polls denied Erdoğan his parliamentary majority. Erdoğan’s response was ingenious. He called for new elections, declared he was “going to war” with Isis, made one token symbolic attack on them and then proceeded to unleash the full force of his military against PKK forces in Turkey and Iraq, while denouncing the HDP as “terrorist supporters” for their association with them.civilian activists associated with the HDP. Victims have repeatedly reported police preventing ambulances evacuating the wounded, or even opening fire on survivors with tear gas . As a result, the HDP gave up even holding political rallies in the weeks leading up to new elections in November for fear of mass murder, and enough HDP voters failed to show up at the polls that Erdoğan’s party secured a majority in parliament.
