Almost three weeks after the Russian jet drama, Putin continues to bombard the international community with his fabricated DAESH oil trade stories which allegedly prove that members of the Turkish government are facilitating the terrorist organization's financial well-being.
Perhaps because they lack Russian accents, English speaking reporters from both RT and Sputnik News did an excellent job of trying to convince Western audiences that the son of "authoritarian Islamist [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan" was buying DAESH oil. However, U.S. officials quickly and harshly rebuffed these claims with accusations that Russian officials propagate unsubstantiated stories. Eventually the Russian stories fell on deaf ears. The Western media is prone to find statements from American sources to be more trustworthy than sources from another country, especially if the said country's proxy used heavy weaponry to shoot down the passenger plane MH17 in Ukraine resulting in the deaths of 283 passengers and 15 crew members.
The open handbook on Putin's reading table is vintage Stalin. Its pages spew strategies used by other propaganda masters, like Nazi Minister Joseph Goebbels, to influence masses with visually strong messages and colorful posters. Although Russians had "shiny" maps in their presentations, a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to diplomatic protocols, said that most of the pictures were outdated and proved nothing.
However, allegations against the Turkish-DAESH oil trade weren't new. As Italian novelist and academic Umberto Eco writes in his latest book, Numero Zero, "News doesn't need to be invented. All you have to do is recycle it. People have short memories." So where did Russians get their inspiration?
Last year American officials and experts themselves led the way in casting shadows on the Turkish government's alleged role in terror financing. In an article published in September 2014 by The New York Times, a paper perceived by some as closely associated with the Obama administration, similar suspicions were raised about the Turkish government: "The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue... but so far has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network. Western intelligence officials say they can track the ISIS oil shipments as they move across Iraq and into Turkey's southern border regions. '[Turkish authorities have] been turning a blind eye to it, because they benefit from the lower price of smuggled black-market oil," James Phillips said, "and I'm sure there are substantial numbers of Turks that are also profiting from this, maybe even government officials."
Today the same American officials have recycled their own previous allegations and now describe them as "preposterous," "ridiculous," and "untrue." This time, they are right. In 2014 when American officials were attacking Turkey via the media on this front, Turkey was already busy cracking down on DAESH oil networks. To its credit, Turkey successfully intercepted 19.9 million liters of smuggled oil along the border of Syria and Iraq between January and August 2014 alone, according to the Turkish Energy Ministry's official data provided to Buzzfeed late that same year.
Just last week, another American official spoke to journalists in a special press briefing about the DAESH oil trade and downplayed its size. The official said, "Is there some smuggling across the border? I'm sure there is. But it's small amounts and it's probably of a variety of products. But I don't think it's of any significant volume ...of oil or volume of benefit financially."
Why did American officials change their ideas about DAESH oil trade in a year? The answer is clear. Their allegations had served their purpose.
Using the power of the international press, they had forced Turkey by last summer to open its significantly important bases to anti-DAESH coalition forces and actively join the military operations. Then suddenly DAESH oil smuggling across the border lost its importance politically.
Did American officials, I wonder, ever contemplate the damage they inflicted on Turkey, their NATO ally, on this front? In any case, the news cycle has had enough of this blame game and the allegations should be quickly forgotten. This time, I hope, for good.
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