Addressing Turkey’s diplomatic corps on the country’s international priorities, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on top diplomats to “defend Turkish citizens’ rights” in the face of growing hostility toward “Muslims and Turks” in Western countries.
Speaking at the Foreign Ministry’s annual ambassadors' conference Monday, the president said that “cultural racism” was on the rise globally, particularly in Western countries. “Insulting women wearing headscarves in the middle of streets, burning our sacred book Quran under police protection, leaving a severed pig’s head at our mosques … all these examples lay bare the frightening dimensions of Islamophobia,” he said, referring to reported cases in Sweden, Austria and Germany. The Turkish president also charged that some European countries were shutting down associations and mosques with “flimsy excuses.”