President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a searing address Sept. 29 at the Turkish Green Crescent Society’s International Drug Policy and Public Health Symposium in Istanbul. Erdogan made several “headline-making” statements during the speech. One highlight was his reference to a European Court of Human Rights ruling that called on Turkey to halt compulsory religion education and moral values courses. Erdogan criticized the decision from a mind-boggling perspective, stating, "You will never see a debate over compulsory physics, mathematics or chemistry lessons, but for some reason, religion classes are always debated. If you lift compulsory religion and ethics classes, drugs, violence, and racism will fill the void." He added, “If you are asking for compulsory religion classes to be abolished, then you should not be complaining about drug addiction, violence, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.”
Erdogan did not even spare the Islamic State (IS) in his battle cry against Turkey's problem of increasing drug abuse. He explained that there are thousands of Western fighters joining IS and stated, “I believe not all of these are Muslims. Some of them are drug addicts. Some of them are prone to violence.” He concluded that the trigger for drug addiction, terror and violence is greed.
