NATO commander Stavridis visits Turkey

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

NATO Commander Stravidis (L) poses with Turkish General Staff Gen. Özel. DHA photo

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Adm. James Stavridis visited the Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel yesterday on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Turkey’s joining the alliance, the Turkish General Staff said in a written statement.

Stavridis’s visit came ahead of a NATO summit in which issues such as missile defense system and NATO mission in Afghanistan will be discussed.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s main opposition party denounced the burning of the Quran and religious books by NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. “I condemn vehemently the burning of religious books including Quran by NATO soldiers at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. This miserable act to religious books, which came just after hideousness of American soldiers peeing over Afghan Muslims they killed, is unacceptable,” İhsan Özkes, deputy of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), said in a written statement yesterday. “It’s meaningful that Secretary General of NATO Rasmussen, who was elected by support of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was in Turkey the days when Quran was burned,” he added.

The Turkish government had yet to issue a response by late Feb. 23 about the incident that took place in NATO’S Bagram airbase. k HDN