By Cansu Dikme and Ilkay Guder
ANKARA
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday welcomed the UN General Assembly's rejection of the U.S. decision on Jerusalem.
Referring to U.S. efforts to intimidate UN member states in the run-up to Thursday’s vote, he said: “It should be known that democracy is not a perception, a system or a regime where you can buy [good] will.”
Prior to voting on the resolution to declare the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “null and void”, Washington had threatened to withdraw aid from countries that approved it.
“The world is bigger than five [and] much bigger than one,” Erdogan said in a speech at a meeting of provincial heads of the Justice and Development (AK) Party.
The president has previously railed against the dominance of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“No country has the right to threaten the world blatantly, relying on its financial and political power in cases that are an obvious example of lawlessness and injustice,” he added.
“This will take its place in the history of democracy as a quite ugly and inexcusable decree.”
The nonbinding resolution, sponsored by Turkey and Yemen, was approved by 128 countries with nine voting against.
Apart from the U.S. and Israel, seven nations opposed the motion although 35 of the 193 UN member states abstained and 21 were absent from the vote.
On Monday, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution backed by the 14 other council members calling on Trump to reverse his Jerusalem declaration.
Erdogan thanked those countries that backed the resolution and called for the U.S. to review its decision. “The recent history of our world is full of shows of force with tragic ends,” he said.
