Monday 11 February 2008

Turkish PM: "Assimilation is a crime against humanity"

A crowd of 16,000 expatriate Turks cheered Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a vast indoor auditorium in Germany on Sunday as he told them to resist assimilation into the West. "Assimilation is a crime against humanity," he told the crowd. "I can well understand that you are against assimilation...It is important to learn German, but your Turkish language should not be neglected."

Let's let them into the EU, then!

You've also gotta love the sheer chutzpah of the website reporting this when it says "Erdogan was lionized by other speakers at the event, organized by the Union of European Turkish Democrats, a group that supports his moderate Islamist AKP party."

Moderate? If Erdogan and his party are moderate, why did thousands of secular Turks protest against his election last year, fearing that he would bring back Islamic law and destroy the secular state? Were they perhaps aware that Erdogan was a former member of the now-disbanded National Salvation Party, which was outlawed for threatening the secular Turkish constitution?

"Moderate"...puh-leeze!

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