Erdogan advises Obama to outgrow amateur talk

1/23/2008
Turkish Press, MI

If I were Erdogan I wouldn't say “A day may come when you will have to choose between 70 million Turkey and two million Armenia. One has to think carefully before uttering such words. I suggest that he outgrow the amateur period of his political career,”. Let me ask you Erdogan how much does the 70 million Turkey contribute to the USA economy compared to the one million Armenian Americans? I let you have the pleasure to answer this question.

ANKARA - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dubbed Barack Obama, one of the Democratic frontrunners in the U.S. presidential elections who promised to recognize the killing of Armenians in 1915 as “genocide,” an amateur of politics without explicitly mentioning his name.

“Presidential elections campaigns continue in the United States. Some politicians` discourse demonstrates that they do not have an adequate knowledge of their country`s policies,” said Erdogan in his Justice and Development Party (AKP) meeting yesterday. He noted that Turkey nurtured good relations and a strategic partnership with the United States. “Everybody knows that adoption of such a resolution would cause irreparable damage to Turkish-American relations,” Erdogan said. Ankara-Washington relations cannot be subdued by lobbies, slander and petty internal political calculations, Erdogan said. “A day may come when you will have to choose between 70 million Turkey and two million Armenia. One has to think carefully before uttering such words. I suggest that he outgrow the amateur period of his political career,” he said.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.