Smuggled IS Oil: Turkey's Hand in the Cookie Jar

The domestic attacks in Paris earlier, and now San Benardino and London, are condemnable. Such attacks should open western eyes that terror, as an instrument of state policy, cannot be used without it coming back to hurt its users. The cynical principle that it is not hurling the bomb that is the problem, but who they are hurling it against, will not work.

The western policy: Contain IS, fight the Assad government

At home, the western governments are waging a “Global War on Terror”, asking support for bombings sundry “enemies” abroad, boots on the ground, and curbing civil liberties at home. A Paris, San Bernardino or a London tube attack, all become grist to the mill in this all consuming global war. On the ground, the truth, which the mainstream media shields carefully from reaching its audience, is that the west is waging a war, not against al Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, ISIL or ISIS) but against all those forces that dare pursue an independent path. The western alliance -- of the US, France and UK -- fight Iran, the Syrian government led by Assad, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and sundry other forces that do not toe the western line. And they ally with all those forces who represent the most reactionary sections of the Arab world – the Saudi Royals, the Gulf monarchies, Qatar.

Image Courtesy: wikipedia.org

Of course Israel is main beneficiary of fighting the resistance axis in West Asia. They have not only been opposed to the Hezbollah, who has inflicted on it the only defeats it has suffered in the region, but have been in a fairly public alliance with al Nusra, the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate.

Turkey is a special case. It was a member of NATO under various Kemalist governments, and continues to be one under the AKP, an Islamist formation with roots in Muslim Brotherhood. It has its own vision of expanding its influence with a combination of Sunni sectarian Islam and Turkmen identity, particularly in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It has been at the forefront of the war to remove Bashr al Assad in Syria.

According to current western statements on Syria, al Qaeda, the supposed enemy under the Global War on Terror, are the warm and fuzzy “moderates” fighting the Syrian army of Assad, and therefore allies. ISIS is to be “contained” but not defeated.

Turkey's illegal oil trade: financial lifeline of IS

There is an almost universal agreement that the US, at best, was bombing IS half heartedly. It did not bomb its oil infrastructure and the tankers transporting oil to Turkey, on the plea it might hurt civilians and “the environment”. This from an airforce that has bombed the Kunduz Hospital of the MSF in Afghanistan.

Now that Russia has made clear that IS is selling its oil through Turkey, and that is one of its main source of funding, the Americans and the French have bombed some of its oil infrastructure, at the same time claiming that oil “exported” by IS through Turkey is very small. Yes, compared to the oil being pumped or trucked by the Barzani leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through Turkey, it is indeed small. The IS “supply” through Turkey is only about 45,000 barrels per day compared to the 600,000 barrels per day of the KRG. But it still nets IS at least 1 to 1.5 million dollars a day, not exactly chump change, and a major source of its funding. It helps IS to pay about $400 per soldier, a pay higher than the Syrian army.

Unlike the PKK, the Barzani leadership of the KRG has been in tacit alliance with Turkey. The KRG controls the northern Iraqi oilfields around Erbil, and has even a pipeline to Ceyhan, the oil port in Turkey. The Iraqi government has protested to Turkey about this illegal sale of Iraqi oil. Iraq has also strongly protested the recent move by Turkey to position its troops and tanks in Iraq, supposedly to “train” the Peshmerga forces of KRG. Why it would need dozens of tanks to “train” Peshmerga forces is not clear. Is it a march to Mosul with a view to capturing it from IS and maintain the supply of oil to Turkey? Or is it to protect the IS forces there?

The bulk of Kurdish and IS oil ends up in Ashdod in Israel. It is estimated that KRG and IS oil meets 75% of Israel’s' oil needs. Of course the Turks make the big bucks from this sale of illegal Kurdish and IS oil. The Russian government has openly talked about people close to the Turkish President Erdogan, his son and son-in-law, being central to this illegal sale of Iraqi and Syrian oil.

Turkey claims that it does not buy IS oil but only Kurdish oil. It has dismissed all claims of the involvement of Bilal Erdogan, President Erdogan's third son and Berat Albayrak, who was recently appointed as Turkey's Energy Minister, being linked to the supply of oil by IS. However, a senior MP, from the opposition, People’s Republican Party (CHP), Eren Erdem said in a press conference this week, "I have been able to establish that there is a very high probability that Berat Albayrak is linked to the supply of oil by the Da'esh terrorists.” He also said he is going to provide evidence soon for his claims.

The US reluctance in asking Turkey to choke the oil smuggling by IS comes out in various ways. After the Russians presented evidence of long line of tankers going from Syria to Turkey, the US spokesperson, Mark Toner claimed that the US believed that Ankara was not complicit in oil smuggling. He said, "We frankly see no evidence, none, to support such an accusation." When presented with images of oil tankers lined up at the Turkish border, an unnamed US State Department official claimed that from the images, they still did not see oil tankers crossing the Turkish border.

Responding to these statements, Major General Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman presented a series of photos and videos, and said. “We advise the American side to have a look at how the tanker trucks not only drive through checkpoints at the Turkish border, but pass through them without even stopping.”

Turkey supplying arms to al Qaeda and IS

Turkey has not only been caught in its hand in the Syrian and Iraqi oil cookie jar, it has also been exposed in supplying arms and ammunition to the “rebel” forces disguised as humanitarian aid. In January 2014, military police stopped trucks carrying “medical aid” to Syria, which were actually found to be guns and ammunition. The MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation, was responsible for these trucks. This story was broken in the Turkish media by Cumhuriyet, a leading Turkish newspaper in May, 2015. It published photos and videos of the search, confirming that the lorries were indeed carrying weapons.

The response of the Turkish state has been vicious. Erdogan threatened Can Dundar, the Editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet with severe retribution for outing a “national secret”. After AKP's victory in the November elections, Dundar and his associate, Erdem Gul, have been charged with treason. The military officials who carried out the seizure of the MIT trucks have also been similarly charged. The state run Anadolu Agency reported that a court in Istanbul has ordered “the arrest of three senior army officers, including two generals on charges of espionage” for the search of Turkish intelligence trucks in 2014.

Erdogan is now on record that the MIT indeed did supply arms to “our Turkmen brethren” in Syria. The Turkish government had strongly protested against the Russian bombing of these same Turkmen rebel forces, just before Turkish downing of the Su-24. These were the forces that Russia was bombing in north-west of Latakia, close to the Turkish border, when the Russian Su-24 was shot down. Presumably, these were the same Turkmen forces that shot dead the Russian pilot as he descended from the stricken aircraft.

Who are these Turkmen “brethren” of Turkey? The leader of the squad that shot dead the Russian pilot is a Turkish national and a member of the Turkish Grey Wolves, an ultra nationalist Turkish group. In a recent attack by the Syrian government forces and Russian air attacks, a number of such “Turkmen” fighters have been killed. They number a Chechen fighter, a Saudi Arabian military preacher known to be a part of al Qaeda, and sundry others. A number of commentators have claimed that these “Turkmen” fighters are Chechens (Russia), Uyghurs (China), and various other foreign fighters have been funnelled into Syria by Turkey, and not Syrian Turkmen who live in this area.

The myth of the west is that the Syrian Civil War is three sided – there is the ISIS, which is bad, and there is the Syrian government forces and its allies, equally bad, and the moderates of the Free Syrian Army, who are good. The reality is that the FSA has virtually ceased to exist and its various groups are now a part of the Jaish al Fatah – the Victory Front – lead by Jabahat al Nusra, the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate and the equally sectarian Ahrar al Sham,. The Turkmen brethren of Erdogan are very much of a part of Jaish al Fatah and have been part of the major force threatening Aleppo.

There are only two sides in the Syrian war

There are no three sides to the war in Syria. The reality on the ground is that either the Syrian government forces defeat the Islamist sectarian forces or they take over the way that they have taken over Libya. A regime change in Syria without Assad, as the western powers want, will only lead to a disintegration of the Syrian state. Another failed state, with various sectarian forces fighting each other to enforce its particular version of retrogressive, Wahhabi Islam.

The western powers were quite comfortable with the war in Syria, growth of IS, and the war in these region being led by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. It fitted in with their larger picture that the threat is not from a Wahhabi Islam, or Muslim Brotherhood but Arab nationalism.

What has changed is that Turkey is not just funnelling foreign fighters into Syria. It is now also a route of such “radicalised” elements coming back to the west. Paris showed that the flames of war would not be confined only to the region but has the potential of a blow-back. France has already changed its tune; Bashr al Assad can be a part of an interim solution; instead of being, as the US has been claiming, the “original sin”. President Obama had earlier claimed that if Bashr al Assad goes, so would ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria, presumably, very much like in Gaddafi's Libya.

It is a welcome sign if the US does change its tune. Recently, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State seems to have conceded that Bashr al Assad can indeed be a part of the interim solution. The Obama-Putin meeting this week in Paris, at the sidelines of the Climate Change Summit, is significant. Obama has expressed regret for the shooting down of the Russian aircraft, something that Turkey even now refuses to do. Does it indicate a change in the US view of Russian intervention in Syria? We will have to wait and see how the continuing Syrian negotiations between the various powers pan out.

The problem in West Asia and North Africa, is not Islamic sectarian forces, but the regimes that nurture them: Saudi Arabia, Gulf monarchies, and now Turkey. These are all “crucial” allies of the west. It is their petrodollars that shore up the western arms industries and their financial empire. It is time the world realises that the monarchies and the 21st century are not compatible. That is what the west needs to address, instead of empty gestures such as a few, half hearted bombing runs against the IS.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick