Welcome our fight against terror, Turkish minister says

By Seyit Aydogan

HALIFAX, Canada

The world should be grateful for Turkey’s battle against terrorism, EU Minister Omer Celik said Saturday on the sidelines of a security forum in Canada.

“Everyone should appreciate Turkey's fight against terror and take it as an example,” he told Anadolu Agency in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where leaders from more than 60 countries are attending the International Security Forum.

Turkey faces terrorism front multiple sources -- Daesh extremism, the separatist PKK and far-left groups such as the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C).

Celik went on to criticize what he said was the West’s duplicity, citing the case of a Belgian court that earlier this month ruled that the PKK could not be considered a terrorist organization despite its designation as such by the EU and U.S.

He said it was a “mistake of mentality” to consider the PKK’s terrorism as an “armed campaign”, as the Belgian court had done, because this would be to regard the PKK as “an equal power” to the Turkish state.

Celik also criticized the West over the lack of democracy in the Middle East after encouraging the Arab Spring uprisings but then remaining silent while democracy was “robbed” in countries such as Egypt, where a military coup unseated the country’s first freely elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

In a further attack on the West, he condemned European leaders for failing to visit Turkey in the month following the July 15 coup attempt.

“No one from any EU institution visited Turkey in the first month after the coup attempt,” he said during a forum session.