Erdoğan warns ‘race of Islamophobia’ by public authorities in the West

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on May 25 warned that Islamophobia was fueled by public authorities and spreading, especially in the Western countries. 

"Although westerners want to soften racism against Muslims [calling it] as Islamophobia, we know that it is enmity against Islam," Erdoğan said, speaking at the first International Media and Islamophobia Symposium.

Islamophobia is spreading rapidly in many parts of the world, especially in the West, Erdoğan said, resembling it to a cancer cell.

"The Crusades, which were carried out with the dream of conquering Anatolia and Jerusalem, changed the course of world history with destruction. The West has preserved its grudge against Eastern societies, embodied by the Turks, under the name of orientalism," Erdoğan stated.

"One of the last examples is putting the flag of the terrorist state of Israel on the Austrian prime ministry building," he said.

There are many examples of the suffering caused by Islamophobia in recent history, from the massacres in Bosnia to the tragedies in Turkestan and Palestine, the president asserted.

"The strategy of "demonizing Muslims" initiated by the American administration after the 9/11 attacks had a function that triggered the virus of Islamophobia that already existed in the cultural structure of many societies," he stated.

Those who follow the Western media closely can see the efforts to display Muslims as terrorists and Islam as a source of terrorism, the president emphasized.

Erdoğan said that there was a "race of Islamophobia by the hands of the public authority in Western countries."

Erdoğan accused the Western World of turning its back on the fact that in a place where freedoms have disappeared, well-being cannot exist...