Turkish PM calls on people to go out to spite terror

ANKARA

AFP photo

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has called on the Turkish people to go out and show unity to spite consecutive terror attacks in a bid to keep public morale high and break the terrorists’ objective of spreading fear within society. 

“Let’s not glorify those who are eyeing chaos and crisis. Let’s be in solidarity. Let’s go out, more than ever before, for our individual and social psychology, for our morale and motivation. These streets are ours, these cities, these people are all ours,” Davutoğlu said, during his weekly address to his party’s parliamentary group on March 29. 

The prime minister’s call was aimed to revive social life throughout the country after a chain of terror attacks broke the people’s motivation to socialize in public places, including shopping malls and crowded city centers.

Scores of civilians and more than a dozen foreign tourists have been killed in attacks carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Ankara and Istanbul respectively in recent months. 

“We will protect the life security, peace and welfare of our country like our honor,” he said, vowing terror organizations will never be able to achieve their goal of leading the people to pessimism. 

“Whatever the conditions will be, we’ll never give up on democracy, rule of law, production, societal peace, social solidarity and public order. Everybody should actively get involved in life by keeping their morale high. They want us get detached from life but we should get involved in life in spite of their efforts,” the prime minister stressed.

“We have pain, mourning and martyrs. We will live through all of this in line with our nobility but we won’t break our morale. Our morale and motivation should be absolute against those who want to break our individual and social psychology. What we have to do as a person, as a society, as a civil society and political parties, is to stand against terrorism and be in full solidarity,” he added.