Turkish PM condemns UN Security Council, Israel

ISTANBUL

Turkish PM Erdoğan meets with Muslim clerics at a conference in Istanbul. EPA photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he does not trust the United Nations due to its failure in the Syrian crisis, while condemning Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Erdoğan described Israel yesterday as a “terrorist state” for carrying out its bombardment of Gaza, highlighting hostility for Ankara’s former ally since relations between the countries collapsed in 2010, Reuters reported.

His comments came after nearly a week of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

“Those who associate Islam with terrorism close their eyes in the face of a mass killing of Muslims, turn their heads from the massacre of children in Gaza,” Erdoğan told a conference of the Eurasian Islamic Council in Istanbul. “For this reason I say that Israel is a terrorist state and its acts are terrorist acts.”

He also criticized the structure of the U.N., according to Anatolian news agency. “When asked how much I trust the U.N., I said ‘I do not trust it at all,’ because the U.N. is a manifestation of war conditions. There is a structure in which only certain beliefs can be represented. There is no country in the Security Council that has a Muslim public. Will it make decisions for our benefit?”

He suggested that the U.N. should not have divisions such as permanent and temporary membership statuses. “Term presidency should change every year, every representative of each continent and each religion could be term president.”

Erdoğan said the U.N. Security Council didn’t do what needed to be done concerning Syrian refugees.

“What is the Security Council doing? It is just watching and advising.” Erdoğan also said Islam would be the only determinant factor, not the sects. ”We don’t put Islam into the categories of Alevi or Sunni.

Islam would be the only determinant factor for us. We can’t fall out with each other by turning sects into taboos. Now Syria is operating in this way, and this is the underlying cause of the ongoing massacre there.”