‘Turkey’s partiality’ adds to bloodshed in region

ANKARA

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (L) shakes hand with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Kılıçdaroğlu’s visit Iraq branded by the PM Erdoğan as ‘touristic.’ AA photo

The Turkish government’s biased approach in regional foreign policy is one of the main factors behind the escalating bloodshed in the “Islamic world,” the main opposition leader has said, while also slamming Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for crying in front of cameras, which he described as “pitiful.”

The remarks from Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu came in a speech delivered in the town of Bayat in the western Anatolian province of Afyonkarahisar, which he was visiting on the 91st anniversary of the “Great Offensive” against Greek forces during the War of Independence.

Despite the government’s self-proclaimed foreign policy of “zero problem with neighbors,” Kılıçdaroğlu said Turkey was no longer friends with any of its neighboring countries, including Iran, Iraq and Syria. He described the use of chemical weapons in Syria as “a crime against humanity,” while claiming that the only place in the world that was scene of such bloodshed was the Islamic world.

‘Training in Turkey’

“Such blood is not shed anywhere else. But it is shed in the Islamic world. Why? We are taking sides,” he was quoted as saying by the Anadolu Agency. “We are training them in Turkey, sending them away to kill his sibling. Isn’t it a shame, a sin?” Kılıçdaroğlu’s words were referring to claims that Syrian rebels have been secretly given military training in Turkey, which have been constantly denied by the Turkish government. In addition to the government’s policies, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself was a personal target for Kılıçdaroğlu, who criticized Erdoğan’s shedding of tears live on television on Aug. 22. Erdoğan cried over an Egyptian father’s letter to his daughter, who was killed by the security forces in Cairo.

After listening to a prerecorded video of the letter being read out, he sat speechless for a few moments with tears in his eyes. Crying in front of cameras does not suit the prime minister of the Republic of Turkey, and such crying was a sign of desperation and pitifulness, Kılıçdaroğlu said. “The Republic of Turkey is a proud state. A proud man is the man who resolves problem of his country and whom we respect, no matter who he is. Arriving at the point of deadlock, falling into a position of gradual loneliness in the world, being dressed down by everybody, and then crying on television screens, do not befit the prime minister of the Republic of Turkey,” he said, adding that “reason should prevail” while governing a state.