Terrorist groups aim to isolate Turkey: Turkish PM

ANKARA

The main aim of terrorist groups working against Turkey is to "isolate" Turkey and "waste its energy", Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday.

At a meeting of top ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party officials, Davutoglu went on to condemn "those who have brought the scourge of terrorism to Turkey for 40 years; those who have dug ditches in our cities; and those who attack civilians."

The recent rocket attacks on Turkey's Kilis province on the border with Syria, which has been hosting tens of thousands of Syrians, was part of a dirty plan, said Davutoglu, stressing that these terror “barons” carry out what their owners order them to do.

"These proxy organizations want Turkey to get wrapped up with violence and lose its energy and thus not get involved in the region’s restructuring process… The PYD, Daesh, and the murderous Assad regime are in clear collusion," added Davutoglu.

"Turkey's protecting the innocent Syrians disturbs someone," said Davutoğlu. "That's why they target Kilis."

The attacks have been and will be responded to necessarily, Davutoglu said, and added, "Our government will keep on giving all support to Kilis.”

Davutoglu said a cabinet meeting had decided on additional security measures for Kilis, including military measures along the border and in Kilis along with monitoring the border with more drones.

"The international community has still a hesitant attitude and thus fails in counter-terrorism. Wild terrorist organizations can pitch tents in the middle of a European capital and fly their rags," said Davutoglu in reference to a notorious incident last month with supporters of the terrorist organization PKK in Brussels.

"They may do interviews with these bloody minded terrorists. This is not journalism, this is promoting terrorism," added Davutoglu.

Mentioning his visit to Strasbourg on April 19 when he addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Davutoglu said:

"I want to underline an important matter here. We broke new ground in Strasbourg, new ground that we have been proud of on behalf of 78 million Turkish people. I was proud to be the first Turkish prime minister to address the CoE Parliamentary Assembly in Turkish after our language was approved as one of the official languages of the EU."

"That day showed us that Turkish is one of the main languages of European languages and our country is a European country."

Davutoglu also stressed that he called on European countries in the assembly to take a look at themselves. "We underlined that the most serious problems of the EU are racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. We reminded European countries that there are no good terrorist groups and that the PKK and PYD are also terrorist organizations like Daesh."

On last month’s Turkey-EU refugee deal, Davutoglu said they had gradually cut the number of illegal refugee crossings from nearly 7,000 daily last November to just 130.

Chapter 30 of Turkey's EU accession process will be opened in June as part of the refugee deal, said Davutoglu, and asserted that visa exemption for Turkish citizens visiting EU member states would also go into effect as of June.