Presidents Of Turkey

"Turkey’s president is blackmailing the United States by threatening to curb his country’s support for the international coalition against the Islamic State. His goal: to ensure my extradition, despite a lack of credible evidence and virtually no prospect for a fair trial. The temptation to give Mr. Erdogan whatever he wants is understandable. But the United States must resist it."

"How would the world respond if a European prime minister called for the mass deportation of all Turks? Yet Erdogan's xenophobic demagoguery attracted precisely no condemnation from Washington or Brussels. He probably overestimated the number of "tolerated" economic refugees from neighboring and former Soviet Armenia, but is it not interesting that he keeps a count in his head? And a count of the tiny number of surviving Turkish Armenians as well? The outburst strengthens the already strong case for considering Erdogan to be somewhat personally unhinged."

"In other words, the bar should be maintained at the level of a pluralistic and participatory democracy."

"Turkey doesn’t understand that, for the United States, buying a sophisticated Russian air defense system is a major national security issue that can’t be papered over. But Americans don’t understand that all their tough talk about leveling sanctions against Turkey if the Russian arms sale goes through only plays into Turkish leaders’ hands politically... Speaking at a forum on Ankara-Washington relations hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, Hudson fellow Blaise Misztal said that, to President Tayyip Erdogan and his political coalition partners, “sanctions and kicking you out of 'NATO is a winning policy” because it fuels long-standing and growing anti-Americanism in their nationalist-leaning array of parties. Since 2014, and particularly after a failed coup attempt in 2016 that many Turks believe was known in Washington before it was launched, Erdogan “is becoming closer to [[Vladimir Putin|[Vladimir] Putin]], [[[Bashar al-Assad|Bashir al] Assad]], Iran and China” to burnish his nationalist credentials, Misztal said. As an example of how this plays out, Erdogan told his parliament Wednesday the nation is “passing through a very critical period, from economy to security.” He warned about plotters still inside its borders and their outside supporters. At the same time as Erdogan spoke, a Turkish newspaper reported the defense ministry is sending troops to Russia to receive familiarization training for the S-400 air defense system."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"Unfortunately, it is not enough to be right in the current world order; you need to be mighty as well. The criticism Erdoğan has been directing to the existing world order for years by stating that the world is bigger than five has actualized. Erdoğan has thus revealed de facto that justice cannot be expected from the current world order. You do not demand rights from this world order, you take it."

"He is an self-serving figure, asserting that he exploits Kurdish bloodshed to gain political advantage and stoke nationalism within Turkey.Erdoğan plays both sides of the coin, supporting different parties and groups when it suits his interests."

"“One does not believe in their sincerity at all. Neither our Arab people nor our Palestinian people should believe him. He is a trader. He plays both sides. When it suits him, he is with Israel, when it suits him, he is with Palestine,”"

"There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera."

"But foremost, I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled."

"Everyone should unconditionally accept that Israel is an indispensable element of the Middle Eastern mosaic."

"There exists an unmistakable demand in the Middle East and in the wider Muslim world for democratization."

"There are people who say that "Gül can't be my president". These people don't have good manners for and they should renounce their Turkish citizenship foremost this man will be chosen democratically by the people."

"Every instigator or madman, who will dare to raise his hand against the government, let him be sure that the government will chop it off."

"These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it."

"We are all human beings. (original: Hepimiz insanız)"

"Mr. Peres, you are older than I am. And your voice is genuinely loud. I know that it is because you are, in fact, in a psychology of feeling guilty, thus you better know that I will not sound that loud. And when killing is the case, you know how to kill very well. I know how you killed the children on the beaches, I know how you shot them. Two ex-PMs of your country once told me important things. You have had such prime ministers who said, "When I enter Palestine on a tank, I feel happy — in a different way." You have had PMs who said to me "I feel happy when I am on a tank while entering Palestine." And you give me those numbers. I would release their names, in case some of you might be curious of. I also condemn those who acclaim this cruelty, because I think it is a crime against humanity as well."

"There is but one alternative for Turkey. Either African barbarism, under Arabian direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish strong leadership, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Africa and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration."

"...it's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide"

"Those who do not want to take a side will be eliminated (read as: irrelevant for) from the process."

"Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb were not and never will be Jewish sites."

"In my country there are 170,000 Armenians. Seventy thousand of them are citizens. We tolerate 100,000 more. So, what am I going to do tomorrow? If necessary I will tell the 100,000: OK, time to go back to your country. Why? They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country."

"There is no difference between killing a baby in its mother's stomach and killing a baby after birth."

"I consider abortion to be murder. No-one should have the right to allow this to happen."

"There is a trouble called Twitter, the finest lies are here. Nowadays, social media is actually the headache of societies."

"Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood."

"You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men. You cannot make women work in the same jobs as men do, as in communist regimes. You cannot give them a shovel and tell them to do their work. This is against their delicate nature."

"What women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal. Because equality turns the victim into an oppressor and vice versa."

"As Muslims, we cannot overcome our difficulties without achieving unity in spite of our differences."

"A woman who says 'because I am working I will not be a mother' is actually denying her feminity."

"A woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete."

"Europe, you don't want us because the majority of our population are Muslim ... We knew it but we tried to show our sincerity."

"It is still not completely clear how ramified this organisation is [ Fethullah Gülen ] which resembles your P2 lodge, a criminal organisation that calls itself religious."

"You cried out when 50,000 refugees were at the Kapikule border... You started asking what you would do if Turkey would open the gates. Look at me — if you go further, those border gates will be open. You should know that."