Erdogan says Turkey protesters are walking ‘arm-in-arm with terrorism’
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has accused anti-government protesters of walking “arm-in-arm with terrorism” after three days of some of the most violent riots in decades.
Hundreds of police and protesters have been injured since Friday, when a demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square grew into mass protests against what opponents call Mr Erdogan’s authoritarianism.
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Protests have been held in dozens of cities with the demonstrations showed no sign of abating.
“This is a protest organised by extremist elements,” Erdogan said at a news conference before departing on a trip to North Africa. “We will not give away anything to those who live arm in arm with terrorism.
“Many things have happened in this country, they’ve hanged, they’ve poisoned, but we will walk towards the future with determination and through holding onto our values,” he added.
“Our intelligence work is ongoing [to determine the foreign actors behind the protests]. It is not possible to reveal their names. But we will have meetings with their heads,” Erdogan said according to Hurriyet.
Besides terrorism and foreign actors, Erdogan is also blaming his secular enemies. Reuters writes that Erdogan has also “dismissed the protests as the work of secular enemies never reconciled to the election success of his AK party, which has roots in Islamist parties banned in the past but which also embraces center-right and nationalist elements.”
Turkish P.M. Erdogan should come down on earth from his power politics and resolve the public issues with greater understanding rather than pushing them to the wall using his might. He was wrong in inviting the West and specially Jihadi goons and lately Israel to free their terrors in Syria only to force Assad to leave and have regime change favorable to Jihadis and the West. Even though he has lost his mediator image, still he can play a vital role in saving Syria from total collapse and become a Jihadi capital next door to Turkey.