President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met reporters in Malaysia, where he attended the Kuala Lumpur Summit.
Erdoğan made the following remarks about the Kuala Lumpur Summit:
“We are currently in Kuala Lumpur after Geneva and we attended the Kuala Lumpur Summit organized under the initiative of Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. We had an opportunity to discuss the problems faced by the Muslim world at the summit attended by Heads of State and Government of Turkey, Malaysia, Qatar and Iran as well as senior officials from many other countries. Even though it was scheduled, Indonesia and Pakistan unfortunately could not attend the summit. Therefore, we held the summit as the leaders of 4 countries. We also addressed topics of development, R&D, science and technology, entrepreneurship and defence industry in detail.
We have also discussed the current situation of the Muslim world, which used to be the symbol of science, knowledge, arts and welfare. What should we do to overcome problems in the Muslim world? We should sincerely ask and answer this question. Countries of the Muslim world actually have a huge potential in every field, but domestic conflicts, wars, ignorance, poor administration, economic underdevelopment and foreign interventions prevent them from realizing this potential.
We held several meeting on the sidelines of the summit. We discussed bilateral relations and regional issues with Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad, President of Iran Rouhani and Qatar’s Emir Tamim. We then held a quadrilateral summit with Mr. Mahathir Mohamad, Sheikh Tamim and Mr. Rouhani. During the summit, we set our goals, and the officials that we will nominate will continue to work towards achieving these goals. This process will not end here but proceed after the Summit as well. These four countries will continue to work together. Our efforts will include the fields of science, arts, defence industry, economy, trade and culture.”
Have you discussed the possible joint steps and opportunities for cooperation regarding the issues of Libya and Syria with leaders at the Kuala Lumpur Summit?
We have discussed this issue. If this group of four countries focuses and takes decisive steps on this issue, we can achieve concrete results.
We have the examples of Libya and Syria. We will act in a determined way to jointly assume the responsibilities similar to those that we assumed in Libya and Syria.
Did they enter Iraq under the name of coalition forces? Yes, they did. Did they enter Syria? Yes. They do not ask themselves, “What are we doing here?” Likewise, what is Egypt doing in Libya? What is the Abu Dhabi administration doing in Libya? And you know Haftar is not a legitimate politician, he does not have legitimacy. There are those who strive to give him legitimacy. Al-Sarraj, on the other hand, is a legitimate leader, a legitimate representative. Countries such as Egypt, United Arab Emirates, France, and even Italy are trying to sideline Al-Sarraj. There is also a company from Russia in Libya. You would know that America has many similar companies. In Afghanistan, for example, there are companies founded by former soldiers. They are going there and getting paid a lot of money. They are pursuing the war in an illegitimate way in Afghanistan.
Through the organization named Wagner, they are literally working alongside Haftar as its mercenaries in Libya. It is known who is paying them. That is the case, and it would not be right for us to remain silent against all of this. We have done our best until now and will continue to do so.
In a meeting that I attended, a Libyan academician approached me. He was praying and expressing his gratitude. “You did not leave us alone; you took care of us. If you left us alone, the French, Egypt and United Arab Emirates would give us a very hard time.” he said.
The Armenian issue was recently brought to Turkey’s agenda once more. Turkey wants to remove this issue from political arena and said 'We are opening our archives'. Will Turkey make a new move within the scope of this topic? For example, will it produce a more academic work, such as an international conference or an academic study or a workshop?
We seriously challenged this issue during my Prime Ministry. Needless to say, there was not any serious answer regarding the issue from the other side. These continued for some time but nobody opened their archives. They can't present something that is not there. They have small, symbolic archives at Harvard and a small archive in France. Even in Armenia itself, there are not any serious archives. You know that our Armed Forces currently has an archive of over 1 million documents. “You are welcome to come and study.” We have said this to every academic many times. But they never accepted this challenge. This is because they know and see that when it comes to that stage, it will be against them.
We have now formed a team for the following period. We hope that our friends will conduct a study regarding this and if the international community also participated in it, we would gladly include them. We will further strengthen our work with documentaries by making the Turkish Historical Society more active in this regard. We wish to make this work much more powerful by encouraging some academic studies once again.
Both wings of the Senate in the United States approved the defence budget. There are parts of it that involve Turkey. The F35 program, of which Turkey is a partner, is against the sale of F35 aircrafts by the United States. Likewise, there is a proposal to lift the arms embargo against the Greek Cypriot Administration. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that Turkey would take the necessary measures. What is your comment? What are the measures? There is also the impeachment process of Trump. How will this be reflected in the relations between the two countries?
The statement made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is our statement. Whether it’s the S400 or the F35’s, they are done deals. We’re done with this. We said this many times. And now shamelessly they say that they will impose sanctions on Turkish Stream. This is a complete violation of our rights. It goes without saying that, we will also impose sanctions against all these. We are not a nation whose hands and feet are bound. I always say that “we are not a tribal state.” This is Turkey… We are different with our history and everything. Therefore, we shall also put our own sanctions into practice regarding this issue.
At the moment, there may be issues related to impeachment at the US Congress. We have many of our own issues in domestic politics and foreign politics that we are dealing with. We departed from Geneva, and here we arrived in Malaysia 11.5 hours later. We’re not stopping, we’re doing something. We will continue to do so. The leaders who came to this quadrilateral summit also discussed the issues related to these. As they all have a problem regarding these issues at some point. We also have problems, but hopefully, we have our own alternative solutions which we will put into practice.
How do you see the absence of Pakistan and Indonesia, who were pressured by Saudi Arabia, at the Kuala Lumpur Summit?
This is not the first time Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi administrations have displayed such attitude. Unfortunately, we see that Saudi Arabia has put pressure on Pakistan. They have previously made promises to Pakistan regarding the Central Bank. But above all, 4 million Pakistanis work in Saudi Arabia. They threatened that “We will send them back and take in Bangladeshis instead”. On the other hand, Pakistan, which is in serious economic difficulties due to threats such as “We shall withdraw our money” and also the issues related to the Central Bank, had to act in a different manner at this point. Indonesia was actually going to send the vice-president at first, but then they didn’t.
The same was experienced in Iraq, Syria and Somalia...
These are similar things. As you know, they did not give any support to Somalia. But even though Somalia was troubled, they took up a position. The Abu Dhabi administration was to do something there. Then they gave up or were forced to give up, and they could not. Also, this is very interesting, none of these big countries have an embassy. They have something like a caravan next to the airport, that they call embassy. Our biggest embassy in the world is in Somalia. A place of about 80 thousand square meters. A gigantic area. We have good projects there. We are currently providing military training to Somalia, but now they will continue their education there. Health services, education and so on ... There are also a significant number of Somalian students in Turkey. There are currently young Somalian students studying in medicine and other fields. We will develop these ties. I hope with the new steps, hopefully we can become a main artery in some parts. The whole matter is that “if the intent is good, the fate is good.”
In the fight against Islamophobia there was the idea of establishing a Communication Centre in Istanbul. Today, Turkey and Malaysia signed the framework agreement. Will Pakistan be involved in this project?
There is no obstacle regarding that issue. We talked about this with the Prime Minister of Pakistan in Geneva. The process continues.