Recep Tayyip Erdogan Country Quotations

The Muslim world and its subset the countries of the Middle East have been left behind in the marathon of political, economic and human development. For that, there is a tendency to blame others as the primary cause

I don't want to use the term "nuclear weapons" because those people in Iran who have authority say they are not building nuclear weapons. I make an appeal to the countries who do have nuclear weapons. They don't consider them a nuclear threat. But let's say a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons gets involved in building them, then they are told by those that already have nuclear weapons that they oppose [such a development]. Where is the justice in that?

There is an attempt to tarnish Turkey by using press freedom when it is in fact measures taken against terrorism, i dispute this. Nowhere in Europe or in other countries is there a media that is as free as the press in Turkey.

Even as we ought to accept that each country would progress with a different method and speed toward that goal, the standard for the expected end-state should not be lowered.

I regard the endorsement of both the objective and a method - which can differ from one country to another- of democratization by the parties in the region as a basic requisite of democratization in the Middle East