Did Turkey Just Invade Iraq To Protect Erdogan's ISIS Oil Smuggling Routes?

On Friday, Turkey sent troops into Iraq.

Here's a video of the deployment shared on social media:



In early 2008, Turkish soldiers entered Iraq in a similar effort to eradicate the PKK. "Operation Sun", as the incursion was called, was conducted with Washington's blessing for the most part. "Washington described the PKK as a 'common enemy', and only urged Ankara to keep its incursion short and closely focused," BBC noted at the time, adding that "the positions of the UN and EU have been similar, suggesting a degree of sympathy with Turkey's cause."


And then there was "Operation Steel" in 1995. And "Operation Hammer" in 1997." And "Operation Dawn." And the aplty named "Operation Northern Iraq." 


You get the idea. 


So while history doesn't repeat itself, it damn sure rhymes and here we are again watching as the Turkish military crosses the Iraqi border as though it's not even there chasing "terrorists" up into the mountains.




You might also remember from "ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection," that there seems to be some commingling going on when it comes to Turkish and ISIS crude. Technically, both are "illegal" and because the 45,000 or so barrels per day that ISIS pumps are so inconsequential in the large scheme of things, it's easy for Islamic State crude to get "lost" in the shuffle once it gets to Turkey which works out great for those involved in the smuggling operation (as an aside, Russia has identified what Moscow says are other ISIS oil smuggling routes but we'll focus on northern Iraq for now).

You might notice that there's a certian irony to this whole thing as it relates to the KRG. What the Al-Araby al-Jadeed report (cited in the article linked above) suggests is that the Kurds in Iraq are to some extent complicit in the entire operation which is amusing because it's the sale of undocumented Kurdish crude that allegedly funds the Peshmerga's fight against Islamic State. As with every other dynamic in the region, the entire thing is impossibly convoluted. 

With that in mind, consider where these Turkish troops (who, again, are supposed to be "training" the Peshmerga) are located. 



Araby al-Jadeed's story takes a turn for the fantastic after that, but the point is that it seems extraordinarily convenient that just as Russia is making an all-out effort to expose Turkey's role in financing Islamic State's lucrative oil operation and also to destroy ISIS oil convoys in Syria, that Ankara would dispatch troops and two dozen tanks to the exact place in Iraq where some reports suggest the heart of ISIS' Iraqi oil operation lies. 

For his part, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi has called for Turkey to "immediately" withdraw its troops. He also calls Ankara's incursion a "violation of sovereignty." Here's the full statement:




That would seem to indicate that Baghdad has never approved the "training mission" that Ankara claims has been going on east of Mosul for two years.

