Turkish government criticizes Trump’s immigration ban on Muslim countries

ANKARA

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A senior Turkish government official has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of a ban on the nationals of seven Muslim countries and called Washington to correct the “wrongful measure.”

“Unfortunately, I am of the opinion that rising Islamophobia, xenophobia and anti-immigrant feelings have a great weight on this decision. Taking such a decision in a country like America where different ethnic and religious groups are able to co-exist is very offensive. This is not right,” Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesperson Numan Kurtulmuş told daily Habertürk in an interview on Jan. 31. 

“This is a discriminative decision. I hope they will correct it,” he added.  

Kurtulmuş became the first Turkish government official to speak out against Trump’s executive order that imposed a blanket travel restriction on the nationals of seven majority-Muslim countries: Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. 

“No national from a certain country can be categorically deemed as bad,” he said, emphasizing that the only way for democratic countries and the international community to fight terrorism was to establish a well-functioning network and strengthen the anti-terror coalition. 

“Unfortunately, there are currently two lines working in parallel with each other. The first is Islamophobia and xenophobia, and the other is terror organizations like DAESH [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] that shed blood in the world by using the dark face of Islam and the behind-the-doors minds that control it. Both are serving the same purpose. Both are poisoning the lives of 1.7 billion Muslims. We should be awake on this,” he stated.