Turkey Targeting Regional Rivals, ISIL to ‘Kill Two Birds With One Stone’

Turkey’s anti-terrorist operations "kill two birds with one stone" by targeting regional rivals alongside striking ISIL, a member of the French legislative defense commission told Sputnik on Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova –  Turkey launched a two-pronged campaign this summer in neighboring Iraq and Syria following a series of deadly attacks, attributed both to Kurdish militants and the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

"We all know that Turkey is trying to ‘kill two birds with one stone,'" Nicolas Dhuicq said. "Their airstrikes are aimed not only at IS. They are trying to gain access to oil fields of the Iraqi Kurdistan and to strike at [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s forces and the Kurds in Syria and Turkey."

Speaking after phone talks with his Turkish colleague hours earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated the assertion that "too many indicators" point to terrorist groups plotting attacks in countries including Russia. He said Moscow would raise the issue of gaining an "overall understanding" of financing and equipping channels used by terrorists with the UN Security Council.

On Tuesday, the Russian Aerospace Forces Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer crashed in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane was down by an air-to-air missile launched by a Turkish F-16 jet over Syrian territory and classified the downing a "stab in the back" carried out by "accomplices of terrorists."

The deputy chair of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Javier Couso, told Sputnik earlier this month that Turkey is "almost directly" complicit in purchasing oil smuggled by the IS, a major source of the terrorist group’s funding.

Turkey was defending Islamist groups by downing a Russian Su-24 jet that was carrying out a bombing round of militant targets in northern Syria, a member of the French legislative defense commission told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"Ankara wants to protect some Islamists who are not necessarily of Turkish origin, but who are Turkic-speaking people…They hit the plane because it was targeting these groups," Nicolas Dhuicq said.

Dhuicq attributed the downing of the Russian Aerospace Forces Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer by a Turkish F-16 fighter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to "inhabit the border area with Turkic-speaking people."

On October 5, Erdogan proposed at a joint EU-Turkey summit creating a buffer zone. The French lawmaker conjectured that the proposal was a veiled attempt to annex a strip of Syrian territory.