Erdogan called Islamophobia “equal to anti-Semitism as a crime against humanity” and called for the creation of a U.N.-recognized “Fight Against Islamophobia” day each year. It will be observed in the year of anniversary for the fatal attacks on the two mosques of Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.
Erdogan talked in great detail about the significance of diplomacy, the contribution that can be made to various debates of The United Nations, and above all, Turkey's central position at the crossroads between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
“We are the Asia on the western coast of Europe,” the president said about Turkey's involvement in all things starting from the Syrian civil conflict to the ongoing war in fractured Libya along with the Iran nuclear agreement.
According to what the Turkish president has pointed out, his country was engaged with the Syrian civil conflict and its human rights repercussions since the beginning and until today, has a huge amount of Syrian refugees -4 million, according to his estimate.
Erdogan has called for the need for a “peaceful settlement” to the very uneasy decade-long Syrian conflict, and called on the U.N. to provide more assistance in repatriating Syrian refugees. Erdogan highlighted Turkey's efforts to assist them in returning back home by building many housing structures on Syrian land currently occupied by Turkish and its allies and holding up a picture of a plain housing area and boasting that another 200,000 housing units are being constructed. This was just one of many awkward moments where Erdogan held up a picture to demonstrate his points.
“Irregular migration, refugee crisis, is not to be solved by leaving them to demise, through building walls on the border, through collecting them in refugee camps,” he said, although his photo suggested he is effectively “solving” the Syrian refugee crisis by moving them into slightly-better-constructed refugee camps in Syria instead of Turkey.
Erdogan has called for greater “diplomacy and dialogue” to solve issues such as Iran's search for nuclear arms, the misery for the Afghan people as well as Libya's political instability, the long-running conflict among India and Pakistan to control Kashmir, as well as conflict over the territory that exists between Azerbaijan as well as Armenia — though in the last case he sided strongly in support of “our Azerbaijani brothers and sisters,” who's struggle for “free occupied lands once and for all,” he praised.
Erdogan's enthusiasm to settle any dispute through diplomacy has certain limitations. The most striking thing is that Erdogan was extremely critical of Greece and its ruling party, describing them in the form of “tyrants” and accusing it of “crimes against humanity” for refusing to welcome refugees.
“Greece is unfortunately pushing back these refugees in an illegal fashion, turning the Aegean into a graveyard for refugees,” said the man while holding a picture of two children who drowned whom he accused authorities from the Greek coastguard of sinking.
Erdogan returned to Greece and Greece again in the course of his speech, where Erdogan was furious in defending Turkey's interests in the divided island of Cyprus and claimed that the Greeks were breaking Turkish sovereign rights to the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.
“We will never yield to the escalation strategies of other countries,” he said in a plea for the United Nations to intervene against Greece.
The Turkish president has also shown no interest in negotiations with the PKK which is an extremist Kurdish separatist group that he says is in each Kurdish military force within the Middle East, including those that are backed by the United States as allies against the Islamic State.
Erdogan insists that Turkey was entitled to attack and destroy the PKK and its potential allies wherever they are in the sovereign territories of Syria and Iraq. Erdogan declared the PKK as an unidentified terrorist organization which has been “changing its name on a continuous basis” to deceive allies of Western powers to provide its members with arms and financial aid.
Erdogan has also blasted PKK's “offspring” and other “terrorist organizations” for “abusing instability in Iraq” and making use of Iraqi soil to menace Turkish security. Erdogan also accused the Western community of having made a fatal mistake in not accepting Turkey's accusations against these terrorist groups.
“We want you to cooperate with us instead of terrorist organizations and tyrant regimes,” he added.
Erdogan did not seem to believe that the Palestinians required more in negotiations to secure their own state independent from Israel and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“We have to stop the illegal settlements in the occupied regions through establishing security for the lives and the commodities of the Palestinians,” the president declared.
The Turkish president issued two short criticisms of the Western world's enemies, in the first instance, asking them to reach an agreement with Russia on a cease-fire to its military intervention in Ukraine.
“We believe that the conflict will never achieve an end in victory. A just peace process won't be a loss,” he said, however, he then called for the restoration of “the sovereignty and territorial integrity in Ukraine,” an outcome Russian president Vladimir Putin would certainly regard as a victory.
Erdogan was extremely pleased with Turkey's part in negotiating an export deal for Ukrainian grain to the global market via the Russian Black Sea blockade, and was also proud of it being “one of the greatest accomplishments of the United Nations in recent decades.”
In another notable example, Erdogan very gently criticized China for sexism and abuse of its Uyghur Muslims of the Xinjiang province. He also noted that they are an ethnically Turkic people. Their preferred term for their homeland can be “East Turkestan.” China is currently engaging in what experts on human rights and many free nations which includes that of United States agree is a mass murder against Turkic people living in the region that is under occupation.
Erdogan demanded “protection of the fundamental rights and liberty of the Muslim Uyghur Turks, in a way that will never threaten the territorial integrity and security of China.” The Chinese regime in Beijing defends its use of the Uyghurs by saying they are an issue of security and a separatist movement that is on par as Turkey's PKK menace to Turkey.
In spite of spending a lot of his lengthy address blaming Western states and their allies, and focusing so very little time criticizing Russia or China, Erdogan insisted “solidarity between Turkey and the European Union is very significant,” celebrated on the anniversary marking 17 years of Turkey signing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and pledged the country's support for climate change efforts.
