“Turkey looks like they’re on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said. | Getty Trump aligns with Putin in accusing Turkey of siding with ISIL

Donald Trump aligned himself with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, saying that Turkey appears to be on the side of the Islamic State.

“Turkey looks like they’re on the side of ISIS, more or less based on the oil,” Trump said Tuesday morning in an interview with Sirius XM's "Breitbart News Daily," echoing comments from the Russian president on Monday.


"We have received additional data which confirm that Islamic State oil ... enters the territory of Turkey," Putin said. "The decision to shoot down the plane was dictated specifically by a desire to defend supplies."

Russia and Turkey have been engaged in a tense standoff since Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border last week, after Turkey accused the warplane of violating its airspace. In the aftermath, the Russian government has imposed new sanctions on Turkey, and its officials have discouraged Russians from traveling to the country.

In response to Putin's assertion that Turkey is on ISIL's side due to oil concerns, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan adamantly denied the accusation and said he would resign if it turned out to be true.

But Trump’s comments about Turkey weren’t all negative. The businessman began the Breitbart interview by saying he had a conflict of interest when talking about the country because he has Trump Towers — he reiterated there are two, not just the usual one — in Istanbul.

“I’ve gotten to know Turkey very well; they’re amazing people, they’re incredible people, they have a strong leader,” Trump said. “The strong leader is now fighting pretty much with Putin. If you look at what’s going on, there’s a lot of angst and a lot of anguish going on over there.

“You don’t want to have World War III about what we’re talking about,” Trump said. “This is a problem that’s very resolvable.”

“If you look at Turkey, it looks to me like they want to get something solved, and Putin’s being the tough guy and probably he should be — they shot down his plane,” Trump said.

Trump, who was asked how exactly he would stop the problems in the Middle East from metastasizing into a war, didn’t have concrete examples but expressed optimism that with his temperament he would get things done.