Erdogan: Turkey cannot be confined to ‘shallow waters’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Turkish people “have not, and will not give in to those trying to confine us to shallow waters.”

“Whoever tries to limit Turkey’s horizon to 782,000 square kilometers is, if not ignorant, is certainly a stranger to these lands,” he told a military event marking so-called “Victory Day” that commemorates Turkey’s victory in the last battle of the Greek-Turkish War in 1922.

“How can we turn our backs on Jerusalem, where our forefathers ruled in peace, tranquility, and prosperity for four centuries? How can we turn a blind eye to the land of Palestine, where [Ataturk] fought to keep the enemy from reaching it? How can we close our ears to the cries of our Palestinian brothers who for eleven months Israel has been committing genocide against them?” Erdogan asked, underlining that “our hearts beat with all our brothers and sisters in the Turkic republics.”