Erdogan Quotes

Even touching Erdogan is a form of worship.

Erdogan wants an old-fashioned Islam, if you will, for lack of a better term.

Let's be realistic, every terrorist came to Syria, he came through Turkey with the support of [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. So, fighting those terrorists is like fighting the army of Erdogan, not the Turkish army, the army of Erdogan.

President Erdogan is aiming Turkey at a Sharia nation. That’s where he wants to go. He is a Sharia law, full-fledged, one percent Islamist.

Feminists are now being vilified in politics, erdogan used to speak more embracingly, saying he was the leader of everyone, whether they voted for him or not. He sounds as if he puts a distance between himself and half the nation.

There might be many similarities between Erdogan and Putin. We can see that in the current developments, unfortunately. But Viktor Orban seriously does not fit in that list.

[Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is an adherent of realpolitik. He knows that international relations are not built on the strength of unilateral demands, but on solutions that are in everybody's best interest.

Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan's government.

And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide.

Looking at polls of Arab public opinion, you look at popular figures, the most popular figure is the prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan, and then it goes down the list. You get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, you don't get Obama, or in fact any western leader. The public doesn't want the whole imperial project. So if you had democracy, it would be all over.

If Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot placate ISIS, how are we ever gonna be able to? And placate is clearly what John Kerry, who once served in Vietnam, and Barack Hussein O and Hillary Clinton think is the only thing we have to do is placate them. Because we’re at fault, see.

I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.

Politicians like Prime Minister David Cameron have lost all sense of reality. The people have seen how billions were spent on Greece and Turkey, on deals with Erdogan or for asylum seekers.

I don't believe that in a couple of months Erdogan and the United States regime, and the Western regimes in general, and of course Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are going to stop the support of the terrorists.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be considered a gradualist. He is not decreeing Sharia as the law of the land tomorrow. He’s making gradual steps to desecularize the country so it’s not a shock to everyone, doesn’t cause all kinds of panic in the western world and the Europe world. And ISIS might be growing impatient. Even though they’ve been allied over oil and Syria, ISIS could be growing impatient. Then they see the deal with Israel, and they say, “To hell with this.”

He [Erdogan] has crept up to the edge talking about mistakes by pilots. But he also knows that with leaders like himself and Vladimir Putin, apologies may not be the answer. Just look at Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized years ago to Erdogan over this incident off the coast of Gaza in which Turkish people died onboard an aid ship. And only just now is that relationship at least in talks to be improved.

Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it's very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.