Besir Atalay, Turkish Deputy PM, blames Israel ‘Jewish Diaspora’ for civil unrest and protests
One of Turkey’s deputy prime ministers, Besir Atalay, tried to deflect attention from protests against Turkey’s Islamist government, blaming Jews and Israel. Days after the comments Atalay now blames the media for misrepresenting those comments.
“World powers and the Jewish Diaspora prompted the unrest and have actively encouraged it,” Atalay said Speaking to reporters in Kirikkale.
“There are some circles that are jealous of Turkey’s growth,” he said in the Central Anatolian province of Kirikkale, according to Today’s Zaman. “They are all uniting, and on one side is the Jewish diaspora. You saw the foreign media’s attitude during the Gezi Park incidents; they bought it and started broadcasting immediately, without doing a [proper] evaluation of the [situation.]”
Now the media is blamed:
“A news agency consciously misrepresented what I said regarding the Gezi Park events. I’m saddened,” Atalay said in a written statement today, July 3. “There is no indication of any blame toward the Jewish Diaspora or the Jews (in my remarks).”
Hundreds of thousands of people went onto the streets on May 31 as a reaction to the police’s excessive use of force against a group of peaceful protesters in downtown Istanbul trying to save one of their last remaining green areas. These protests lasted for almost a month, and turned into an individual expression of people opposing Erdogan’s policies and rhetoric in governing the country.
People were arrested and injured regularly during the protests.
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