Ankara's move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border prompted a media blitz from Moscow, which has variously accused the Erdogan government of being complicit in a business that nets Bakr al-Baghdadi between $500 million and $1 billion per year in revenue.

To be sure, those who have followed Islamic State's meteoric rise are well aware of the fact that Turkey has played a rather decisive role in the group's recruiting efforts by looking the other way as a steady stream of foreign fighters - emboldened by the ISIS propaganda machine - have streamed into Syria. 

Ankara, like Riyadh and Doha, is keen on seeing the Assad government fall and has been instrumental in the effort (supported by the West) to funnel money and weapons to the various Sunni extremist groups fighting for control of the country. As Nafeez Ahmed put it in a recent piece posted first on Medium, "NATO is harbouring the Islamic State and France's brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks."