Turkey's opposition, Syria-based independent analysts and now Rystad Energy, an independent oil and gas consulting firm, are providing new details on how the illegal Turkey-Daesh trading scheme works.
The Norwegian news agency Klassekampen has leaked Rystad Energy's report, which has shed light on how large amounts of oil have been smuggled to Turkey from Daesh-controlled zones in Syria and Iraq and then sold at sharply reduced prices — from $25 to $45 per barrel.
"Of course, ISIS [Daesh] is not engaging in oil deals without the knowledge of NATO since it is precisely NATO that it is doing business with. In fact, one of the principal smugglers conducting business with ISIS is Bilal Erdogan, the son of Turkish President Recep Erdogan," writes Brandon Turbeville in his article for ActivistPost.com.
"Bilal Erdogan is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution… [P]resident Erdogan's close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks," Tekin said in an interview with Turkish media.
Interestingly enough, on September 15, Turkey's English-language newspaper Today's Zaman reported that the BMZ Group owned by Bilal Erdogan purchased "two tankers in the last two months at a total cost of $36 million."
The media called attention to the fact that the other partners of BMZ were Mustafa Erdogan and Ziya Ilgen, while Erdogan's other son, Burak Erdogan, also owned a fleet of ships.
In his piece for New Eastern Outlook US author F. William Engdahl elaborated that "Bilal Erdogan's maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS' [Daesh's] smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers."
On the other hand, Syria-based independent analyst Afraa Dagher described how the stolen crude is being transported from Syria and Iraq to Turkey before finding its way to Israel.
"The Islamic State in Syria and the Levant [Daesh] has been caught smuggling stolen oil to Turkey as its primary buyer. Oil tankers have been heading from Syria and Iraq to the Turkish city Zahko, which is located close to Sirnak province," Dagher narrated in his article for ActivistPost.com.
#SYRIA #VIDEO Airstrike on an #ISIS column of tanker trucks (#Aleppo province) https://t.co/tpNRQThpXP
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) 23 декабря 2015
The analyst revealed that the stolen crude is brought to Turkey as a "waste product" and then redirected to the Turkish town of Silopi where oil smugglers receive their money. After that the oil is being transported to end customers through the three Turkish ports of Dortyol, Jihan and Mersin.
The illicit oil business has been taking place since the beginning of the Arab Spring by one and the same group of terrorists, including al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front, Dagher stressed.
Remarkably, back in June 2014 French intellectual and political analyst Thierry Meyssan was banging the drums over al-Nusra Front and Daesh's illicit oil trade. The French analyst posed the question how the Islamist groups could sell oil on the international market closely monitored by the United States.
"If al-Nusra Front and ISIL [Daesh] are able to sell oil on the international market, they are authorized by Washington and are linked to storefront oil companies," Meyssan suggested in his article for Voltairenet.org.
"The Norwegian report is just yet more confirmation of the fact that ISIS [Daesh] exists at the behest and with the cooperation of NATO countries, with Turkey playing a particularly important role," the US journalist emphasizes.
Does Recep Erdogan still remember his promise to resign?
