Recep Tayyip Erdogan Quotes
Attempts by one ethnic group to exercise sovereignty over another are not fair. It doesn't matter if that ethnicity is Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Chaldean or whatever.
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip. Interview by Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, PBS, 21 Sept. 2010.
He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial. This statement was typical of his outlook and behavior. He tortured and murdered Croation and Muslim prisoners. His reference to the “slaughterhouse” was to the Second World War in which the Croats were allies of Nazi Germany and created their own concentration and extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of Serbs were murdered. In the eternal memory of the cycle of revenge in the Balkans, Arkan, tried to retaliate against the Croats who had never been called to account for their crimes and even the leadership of Croatia after the Camp David accords celebrated the Fascist times when they were dominant and were able to settle accounts with the Serbs.
This quotation is a good illustration of a practice that existed in the age of Empire where two or more large powers would agree among themselves as to which one of them had the right to seize a smaller power, not part of the compact.
The Armenians were victims of ethnic cleansing where some were chased out and others killed in nearby Nakhijevan and Azerbaijan. The Armenians in turn have been persecuting those Armenian citizens who culturally identify or have origins in Nakhijevan or Azerbaijan. The hatred is so great that in this quotation the President of Armenia claims that the Government cannot protect the minorities because the minorities persecuted the Armenians in those countries where the Armenians were a minority. The conflict is also religious. Armenians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians while Nakhijevan and Azerbaijan are predominantly Muslim. Ethnically the Armenians were almost all exterminated in the early
He was in a Turkish Prison when he made this statement. Some of his more militant PKK followers rejected the statement assuming that it was coerced. Most agreed and were tired of a fight against an overwhelmg Turhish military and police. However the PKK militsntd, devclsred terrorists by the US and many other nations, killed 40,000 Turks including many Kurds who are and have been an ethnic minority in Turkey who have been treated very badly..
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011 before being required to stand down upon his election as President in 2014. He later returned to the AKP leadership in 2017 following the constitutional referendum that year. Coming from an Islamist political background and self-describing as a conservative democrat, he has promoted socially conservative and populist policies during his administration.
