Turkey's PM to Israel: "We will not remain silent"

Erdogan was speaking at a ceremony in Lebanon where Union of Arab Banks presented him "Leader of the Year" Award.

Referring to the strategical mechanism with the Union of Arab Banks, Erdogan said, "we have initiated a comprehensive cooperation with the member countries of Gulf Cooperation Council. The more your neighboring country and neighboring region gets rich and stable, you will get richer and become more stable. Be sure that those who diverted Turkey's closeness with the Arabic countries and started axis shift discussions carry out an evil-minded campaign. In fact they are jealous of our solidarity."

Speaking to Israel, Erdogan said, "you enter Lebanon with the most modern planes and tanks and attack people with cluster bombs and phosphor bombs without discriminating women and children, schools and hospitals and you want us to remain silent. You make piracy and carry out state terrorism in the Mediterranean, you massacre my nine innocent civilians who carry food to babies, and you expect me to keep quiet. We will not remain silent. We will shout the realities with all our strength and we will defend the rights and laws."

"Now, you will ask me what it meant to talk about this while speaking at a meeting of Union of Banks. Money has no meaning in case rights and laws are not made sovereign. We want justice to be sovereign in this geography, not piracy. We want peace to prevail in the Middle East, not state terrorism. We don't want children to be killed in this region. We want peace and stability to prevail in the region," Erdogan said.

Erdogan also said there were people who tried to exploit NATO missile system and launch black propaganda against Turkey, "I am asking now. Have you heard that name of a country was mentioned as threat in the NATO summit? We prevented this. Have you seen threat country expression? No, you can't. Nobody can make Turkey accept whatever it does not believe in."

"On missile defense system, we have been in dialogue with the countries of the region. We always had negotiations. Turkey has been a country protecting and defending its own interests and interests of the region. Turkey will do its best to make peace prevail in the region," Erdogan underlined.


/World Bulletin/