08 August 2014

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan tells female journalist: 'Know your place, you shameless militant'

Turkey’s Prime Minister has called a prominent female journalist a “shameless militant woman” who should “know her place”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Amberin Zaman, the Turkish correspondent for The Economist, on Thursday while speaking at an election campaign rally.

Remarks she had made while interviewing the opposition leader, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, on television the previous day had been condemned as “insulting to Islam and Muslims” by pro-Government supporters on social media.

[A TOP COMMENT] Mr Erdogan - no extremist when compared with Salafists and Wahhabists or with people like al Baghdadi of the Islamic State or al Zawahiri of al Qaida - usefully demonstrates attitudes which are general among ordinary run-of-the-mill non-extremist mainstream Muslims.

Which should make clear that Islam is a completely alien creed in terms of the values generally accepted in western Europe. Its beliefs are simply incompatible with those which, these days, are current here.

[ANOTHER] And incredibly, this country is held up by some Muslims as an example of tolerant, peaceful, non-misogynist Islam. Thanks, but no thanks.

[ANOTHER] The Muslim world is an economic, social, and or political basket case. The one partial exception to that was Turkey. Now the rise of Fundamentalist Islam is threatening that. [The Independent] Read more