Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps increasingly referring to places outside Turkey as “our lands.” In his statement following the presidential cabinet meeting on November 20, Erdogan said:
“Karabakh [in the South Caucasus] has the same place in our hearts as Gaza. Just as we do not distinguish between Bosnia and Aleppo [in Syria]; Tripoli [in Libya]; Balkh [in Afghanistan]; Thessaloniki [in Greece] and Mosul [in Iraq], we see our own ancient cities and Jerusalem as the same.”
“Karabakh” is the Armenian Republic of Artsakh, currently occupied by Azerbaijan after it – with the help of Turkey – seized it in September after a genocide against the indigenous Armenians there, that lasted from 2020-2023.
On November 17, Erdogan once again announced his government’s expansionist goals. “Whoever says ‘We do not care about Syria, Iraq, Karabakh, Libya, Bosnia, and Jerusalem’ is either intentionally or unintentionally impeding Turkey’s great march,” he stated.
On October 28, at a demonstration condemning Israel’s war against Hamas, he also said that a century ago, Gaza was what Adana [a city in Turkey] was for Turks:
“Edirne [in Turkey] was the same [to us] as Skopje [a city in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia]; Kırklareli [in Turkey] was the same as Thessaloniki [in Greece]; Mardin [in Turkey] was the same as Mosul [in Iraq]; and Gaziantep [in Turkey] as Aleppo [in Syria]. Just like Gaza, they were all part of our homeland that we thought was inseparable from us. Look what we have become now…
“They [the West] unfortunately separated the Turkish nation from all these lands that belong to [Turks] as much as their blood, life and love. They not only separated us [from those cities] physically; they also used all kinds of tricks to remove them from our hearts and minds.”
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The cities in Turkey that Erdogan referred to (such as Edirne, Adana, Kirklareli, Mardin, and Antep) were built and enriched by Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other indigenous peoples thousands of years ago. These cities were later wiped of their indigenous Christian residents as a result of centuries-long Islamic oppression that culminated in the 1913-23 genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
Meanwhile, the Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly to claim that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands historically and legally (mainly through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements and 1947 Paris Treaty) belong to Greece.
Continue here: Gatestone Institute
