Turkish President Erdogan accuses US-led coalition of supporting ISIS & other terrorist groups in Syria

Which, incidentally, should also not come as a surprise in light of the May 2015 declassified Pentagon report, which claimed that ISIS was created as a Pentagon tool to overthrow Syria's president Assad.

Nevertheless, the "pot calling the kettle black" comes at a sensitive time for both the US and Turkey, which are both pivoting aggressively, one internally from Obama to Trump, while the other is shifting its foreign geopolitical allegiance from the US to Russia, which may also explain today's outburst by Erdogan.

Saying that the US have accused Turkey of supporting IS, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Turkish leader blamed the US-led coalition for assisting terrorists themselves. Apart from IS, he also mentioned Kurdish People's Protection Units in northern Syria (YPG) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) as groups supported by the coalition.

Earlier on Tuesday, Moscow accused Washington of "sponsoring terrorism" in Syria. Commenting on the latest National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by President Barack Obama, the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that the new bill "openly stipulates the possibility" of delivering more weapons to Syria, and added that those arms "will soon find their way to the jihadists," which Russia would view as a "hostile act."

Erdogan's comments echoed those from the Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, who told RT that Washington appears unready to play a serious role in fighting Islamic State, as it has fostered terrorists itself and now wants them to remain in the Middle East.

"The Western coalition is of a formal nature, they have no real intention to fight neither in Syria nor in Iraq. We don't see any readiness on their part to play a truly useful and meaningful role in fighting IS, because it's them who have raised terrorists and they are interested in keeping them there," Dehghan said.

According to the Iranian defense minister, Tehran has never coordinated its operations with the Americans and "will never collaborate with them."

He then slammed the US' motives behind the "war on ISIS' saying that "maybe the coalition forces would like to see terrorists weakened, but certainly not destroyed, because those terrorists are their tool for destabilizing this region and some other parts of the world."

One wonders how long before Putin is blamed for this latest political scandal, because if indeed Erdogan does provide proof of US support for the Islamic State, then the Pentagon will need a back story very fast, and what better scapegoat than the Russian president.

Erdogan said on December 27 that he has evidence that, rather than supporting Turkey, the West is backing IS, which has been the target of U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

Erdogan made a similar claim on a visit to Pakistan last month, alleging that "the West stands by Daesh right now" and that its weapons were Western-made.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner called those accusations "ludicrous" and said there was no basis in fact for them.