PM Erdoğan dragging Turkey into sectarian fights: Kılıçdaroğlu

The continuation of Turkey’s current foreign policy under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will cause sectarian terrorism to spill across the country, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has claimed.

On board the plane carrying him to Adana, as a part of the CHP's campaign in support of presidential candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Kılıçdaroğlu told reporters that Erdoğan’s foreign policy had caused Turkey to lose its former “credibility, position and influence in the Middle East.”

“The secretary general of the United Nations is having a regional tour in order to find a way to bring a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, but Turkey is not included in his tour,” he said. “Such a thing could not have been thought of until a few years ago. This is the position Erdoğan has reduced Turkey to. We were a major actor in the region until Erdoğan’s sectarian-focused politics.”

Kılıçdaroğlu did not elaborate, but he implied Erdoğan’s strong Sunni identity by saying that. 

The CHP leader said “sectarian-based” politics had brought nothing other than “pain, blood and tears” to the Middle East, and if Erdoğan continued down this line it could spill across into Turkey too.

“The government has a major responsibility in the bloodshed in the region, from Iraq to Syria, to Gaza” Kılıçdaroğlu continued/ “That is one of the main reasons why we supported İhsanoğlu’s presidential candidacy. As an internationally credible personality, having served as the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation...