Erdogan livid at charges Turkey buys oil from Daesh

ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said Turkey does not buy any oil from Daesh, insisting that his country’s fight against the jihadi group is “undisputed.”

“Shame on you. Those who claim we buy oil from Daesh are obliged to prove it. If not, you are a slanderer,” Erdogan said, lashing out at Russian charges after the downing of a warplane on the Syrian border. Erdogan also said that Russia was Turkey’s biggest energy supplier, followed by Iran.
Turkish F-16 jets shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border on Tuesday, prompting a tough response from Moscow, a major trade partner of Ankara.
“Our country’s stance against Daesh has been clear since the very beginning,” Erdogan said.
“There is no question mark here. Nobody has the right to dispute our country’s fight against Daesh or to incriminate us.”
Russia is preparing a raft of retaliatory economic measures against Turkey after the jet’s downing, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.
“The government has been ordered to work out a system of response measures to this act of aggression in the economic and humanitarian spheres,” Medvedev told a Cabinet meeting.
He said the broad punitive steps could include halting joint economic projects, restricting financial and trade transactions and changing customs duties.
Measures would also target the tourism and transport sectors, labor markets and “humanitarian contacts,” Medvedev said.
“I propose doing all this in a period of two days so that we can move to setting up the appropriate procedures as quickly as possible,” Medvedev told ministers.
Turkey has released audio recordings of its military’s repeated warnings to the pilot of the Russian plane before it was shot down — audio that grows increasingly more agitated.
The recordings, made available to The Associated Press on Thursday, indicate the plane was warned several times Tuesday that it was approaching Turkey’s airspace and asked to change course.
In the recordings, a voice is heard saying in broken English: “This is Turkish Air Force speaking on guard. You are approaching Turkish airspace. Change your heading south immediately.” Most of the audio is garbled and barely comprehensible but the tone of the voice gets more agitated as the warnings appear to go unnoticed.
The audio that was released only involved Turkish warnings, no replies by a Russian pilot. It was not clear if Russian replies were received but not released by the Turkish government, or if the Russian pilots never replied to the warnings or if they never heard the warnings.