Turkish government continues oil shipment to Israel

A shipment map shared by TankerTrackers shows that 1 million barrels of oil on May 19 were secretly transferred to Israel from Turkey’s Ceyhan, a district of southern province of Adana
Sunday, 20 May 2018 20:54

Tankers are continuing to carry oil from a Turkish port to Israel despite the fact that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is campaigning for re-election next month, called a large rally to protest the Israeli government for killing 66 Palestinians. A shipment map shows that 1 million barrels of oil were secretly transferred to Israel.

Israel, which had violently suppressed the protests held by the Palestinians against the U.S. decision that has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, did not get any reactions from the Turkish government except some empty rhetoric. 

TankerTrackers.com, which monitors the daily track of the number of barrels of crude oil and refined product present in various spots & fleets of interest, revealed that an oil tanker had carried more than a million barrels of oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon on May 19, a day after the rally.

"The POLIEGOS departed the KRG berth in Ceyhan earlier this evening with 1.037 million barrels and ‘OPL Port Said’ as destination; which most of the time ends up being Ashkelon, Israel. Meanwhile, a diplomatic row took place this week between Turkey and Israel due to Gaza," TankerTrackers.com tweeted on May 18.

"Looks like she did a hard turn towards Ashkelon after all. This is the first transfer of crude oil (1 million barrels) from a Turkish port to Israel we have identified since the diplomatic row began a few days ago. Trade deals remain ironclad regardless of geopolitics," TankerTrackers.com said in a tweet on May 19.

While a motion proposing the annulment of economic, military and political agreements with Israel is rejected by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its fascist ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the Parliament, these two parties had organized a meeting under the theme "Condemning Oppression, Supporting al-Quds [Jerusalem]" on May 18 in Istanbul.

Speaking to a crowd gathered in İstanbul, Erdoğan urged Muslims to unite against the oppression of Palestinians at the hands of Israel. 

Friday's rally took place ahead of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency meeting. At the special summit in Turkey convened by Erdoğan, they pledged to take "appropriate political (and) economic measures" against countries that followed the United States in moving their Israel embassies to contested Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

DISAPPEARING TANKERS CARRYING KURDISH OIL TO ISRAEL VIA TURKEY

1,5 million barrel of crude oil were previously dispatched from Turkey’s Ceyhan oil pipeline to Israel just in April 2017, according to TankerTrackers.

On April 2018, Samir Madani, a Kuwaiti oil trader living in Sweden and the creator of TankerTrackers, had noticed that an oil tanker named ‘Valtamed’, heading to the Suez Canal from the Turkish port of Ceyhan – which is supplied by the oil pipeline from the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq – suddenly stopped somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, off Tel Aviv but outside Israel’s territorial borders, and turned off its identification transponder.

"Valtamed" had been shipping oil that wasn’t recorded anywhere to a country that wasn’t supposed to buy it – in other words, Israel was secretly buying Kurdish oil through Turkey.