Iraq should listen to advice: Turkish Foreign Ministry
ISTANBUL
DHA Photo
The Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement on its website today calling for the Iraqi government to “not make imaginary assumptions about the expectations of the Turkish public, but to listen to advice instead,” according to daily Hurriyet.The statement was released Nov. 23 in response to a statement issued by the Iraqi Prime Ministry several days before that accused Turkey of “meddling with regional problems.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s statement declared that remarks uttered Nov. 21 by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's were “sincere concerns.”
“The statement [by the Iraqi Prime Ministery] shows that the [Iraqi prime minister] is confusing the situation in Iraq with what is going on in Turkey and has lost touch with reality,” the Foreign Ministry said. “We strongly refuse the misuse of our prime minister's concerns as a basis of throwing around baseless claims regarding our country.”
“The Iraqi prime minister should listen to concerns voiced by Iraqi political parties and quit policies that increase tension in his country. He should take an approach embracing all of Iraqi society and pay attention to advice [given] on such matters instead of putting out baseless claims and conjuring up imaginary assumptions about the expectations of the Turkish people,” the statement went on to read.
The statement released by the Iraqi Prime Ministry had called on Erdoğan to focus on what is happening in Turkey.
“The domestic conditions in Turkey are worrying,” the statement had said. “The Turkish prime minister should focus on problems in Turkey that may cause further ethnic and sectarian problems and look for problems,” the Iraqi statement said.
Erdoğan accused the Iraqi government on Wednesday of trying to drag the country into civil war, amid rising tensions between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdish forces.
“The [Baghdad] regime wants to lead this [country] into a civil war,” Erdoğan told reporters in Ankara before he left for Pakistan.