By Brandon Turbeville

While The Daily Beast busies itself with grasping at straws attempting to somehow blame Bashar al-Assad for funding ISIS by purchasing the oil the terrorist organization has stolen (from Assad), a few media outlets and researchers such as myself have documented how the oil being stolen and sold by ISIS is actually being purchased by NATO, Turkey specifically.

The claims accusing Turkey of playing the largest role in facilitating the ISIS oil industry come with vastly greater evidence than anything the State Department or The Daily Beast has ever been able to invent, even with the power of intellectual contortionism for which they are renowned.

Indeed, suggestions that Turkey purchasing much of the stolen ISIS oil is, not surprisingly, being confirmed more and more each day.





Most recently, a report by Rystad Energy, an independent oil and gas consulting firm, was leaked by Norwegian news agency Klassekampen. This report was put together by Rystad at the request of the Norwegian government and was tasked with tracking the illegal ISIS oil sales. It has apparently determined that most of the oil smuggled by ISIS has indeed headed straight to Turkey.

Rystad compiled the report by using a variety of its own sources in the region in addition to its own databases.

The report seems to confirm what many, including this writer, have been saying for some time – that ISIS oil stolen from Iraq and Syria is being smuggled across the border to Turkey where it is sold to a number of oil smugglers for greatly reduced prices.

Klassekampen, the Norwegian news agency, summarizes the findings of the report by stating, “Large amounts of oil have been smuggled across the border to Turkey from IS-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq. [The] oil is sent by tankers via smuggling routes across the border [and] is sold at greatly reduced prices, from $25 to $45 a barrel.”

The Brent benchmark is currently trading at slightly higher margins, from $35-$50.

The report concluded that “Exports happen in a well-established black market via Turkey. Many of the smugglers and corrupt border guards, who helped Saddam Hussein avoid international sanctions, are now helping IS export oil and import cash.”

Of course, ISIS 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.

As F. William Engdahl writes for New Eastern Outlook,

Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

Vice President of the Turkish Republican People’s Party (CHP), Gursel Tekin has even stated on record that the oil was being smuggled into to Turkey via BMZ, a shipping company owned by Bilal Erdogan. He stated that “President Erdogan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact 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.”

He also said that “a family business and president Erdogan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”

Afraa Dagher, a political analyst now residing in Syria, described the transit of oil from Iraq and Syria through Turkey and on to Israel in the following way:

The Islamic State in Syria and the Levant 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. Both are on the borders with Syria and Iraq. Every oil convoy consists from 70 to 100 tankers. On the other side of the border, the oil smuggling mafias are waiting for these convoys and the oil they carry. Those mafias consist of merchants of Syrian, Kurdish, Iraqi, and Turkish as well as other nationalities, possibly even Iranian. All, however, maintain sympathies with terrorists. The one who is directly responsible for the oil cargo provides it to the highest bidder and, in return, takes a part of the price in dollars. Some drivers receive the empty oil tankers and return back with it, while others who have an official license take the full tankers and transfer it into Turkey. This information belongs to a source in the Iraqi interior ministry who refused to give his name. After subjecting the stolen oil to a preliminary refining, it is brought in to Turkey as a waste product through Ebrahim Khalil crossing via a single gate. This is the border between Turkey and Iraq which is strongly held by Turkish troops, planes and checkpoints. No one can cross it without their knowledge and permission! When the oil enters the Turkish town of Silopi, the Iraqi nest of oil smugglers gets its money. They receive this money by an Israeli-Greek dual citizen (although he is a Greek national) known as Haj Fareed or Doctor Fareed.



Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy Dr Fareed is the Israeli broker and he is the one who coordinates between the mafias which own the stolen oil and three main companies who receive, buy, and transport it through the three Turkish ports of Dortyol, Jihan and Mersin. In order to ship the oil to Zionist Israel via oil tankers, the last station of Syrian Iraqi oil would have to be Ashdod. The rest of the money will be sent to the terrorists in Syria and Iraq in other ways. Of course, this process is not new. It has been taking place since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring by the same groups of terrorists, the so-called rebels. The rebel al-Nusra Front is active in these areas and are inking deals with local tribes and controlling as many oilfields as they can. Several of them, however, remain with unclear ownership and that has allowed the illicit trade to flourish. This was reported by AL-Jazeera English TV, which is a mouthpiece for the “rebels.”

So why haven’t the United States and its “coalition” truly gone after the source of ISIS funding? Why haven’t the United States or the rest of its “coalition” to “degrade and destroy ISIL” addressed the fact that members of NATO are not only buying the oil stolen by ISIS and paying the terrorist organization money that will be used to support its jihadist mission in Syria and Iraq, but addressed the fact that one of the main smugglers is the son of the President of a NATO country? Couldn’t NATO at least request that Erdogan ask his son to refrain from funding the very terrorist organization that Turkey and the rest of NATO claim to see as the end of the world?

The reason for this lack of interest in Bilal Erdogan’s business dealings is because neither the United States nor NATO truly want to destroy ISIS. Instead, they want to continue to use the terrorist organization as the proxy army it was created to be.

As it stands, the stolen oil will continue to cross the Turkish border and head to Israel unless it stopped by the Russians or the Syrian army. Otherwise, the Erdogan family will continue to enrich itself at the expense of civilization and the true source of funding for ISIS will continue to go unmolested. Naturally, mainstream Western media outlets like The Daily Beast will continue to report nonsense blaming ISIS on the one force that has been fighting it from the beginning.

The Norwegian report is just yet more confirmation of the fact that ISIS exists at the behest and with the cooperation of NATO countries, with Turkey playing a particularly important role.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.