From a reputational perspective, this was a decisively bad week for Turkey. In the immediate aftermath of Ankara’s brazen move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border, Vladimir Putin accused the country of being complicit in the funding on ISIS.
Those allegations stung, especially in light of the fact that Putin delivered the accusations while sitting right next to Jordan’s King Abdullah. What Turkey didn’t know, however, was that The Kremlin fully intended to launch an all-out PR campaign to implicate Erdogan and his family in the funding of international terrorism.
In a dramatic presentation delivered on Wednesday [7], the Russian MoD outlined the supply routes ISIS uses to smuggle its stolen crude and as it turns out, all roads literally lead to Turkey. This is of course broadly consistent with our assessment of the situation as outlined in the following four pieces:
- The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking [8]
- Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President [9]
- How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence [10]
- ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection [11]
This all comes on the heels of Russian airstrikes on ISIS oil convoys which Moscow claims provoked Ankara to engage The Kremlin’s warplane late last month.
Well, if you thought Russia was set to let up on destroying Islamic State oil trucks and crude infrastructure, or on bombing ISIL and al-Nusra (both of which are supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar) you can think again, because as the following clips show, Moscow is now hell bent on proving a point to the financiers of Sunni extremism.
A strike on an "automobile column transporting oil products" in Aleppo:
Russian bombers, meet al-Nusra training camp: