ISTANBUL (AP) \u2014 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a speech on human rights Saturday to accuse the West of \u201cbarbarism\u201d for its stance on the\u00a0Israel-Hamas war\u00a0and what he alleged was its toleration of Islamophobia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIsrael has carried out atrocities and massacres that will shame the whole of humanity,\u201d Erdogan told a packed hall in Istanbul the day before the 75th anniversary of the\u00a0Universal Declaration of Human Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll the values relating to humanity are being murdered\u00a0in Gaza. In the face of such brutality, international institutions and human rights organizations are not taking any concrete steps to prevent such violations,\u201d the Turkish leader said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The human rights declaration, proclaimed by the\u00a0U.N. General Assembly in Paris on December 10, 1948,\u00a0enshrines a standard for human rights and freedoms for all people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Referring to Friday\u2019s\u00a0U.S. veto of a United Nations resolution\u00a0calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, Erdogan said a fairer world was possible \u201cbut not with America because the USA stands with Israel. \u2026 From now on, humanity won\u2019t think the USA supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey\u2019s human rights record during\u00a0Erdogan\u2019s two decades in power\u00a0has come under frequent criticism over the targeting of government critics and political opponents, the undermining of judicial independence and the weakening of democratic institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention on preventing and violence against women and has failed to implement European Court of Human Rights judgments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Saturday, the president defined Islamophobia and xenophobia, which he said \u201cengulf Western societies like poison ivy,\u201d as the greatest threats to human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told the cheering audience that the only value \u201cthe West holds on to is its barbarism. We have seen this example of the West\u2019s barbarism in all those unfortunate events that they either supported or perpetrated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Erdogan cited the 2019 attack on mosques\u00a0in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a gunman killed 51 people, as an Islamophobic attack that was \u201clegitimized\u201d and \u201ceven encouraged\u201d by the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAccording to their understanding, non-Westerners don\u2019t have the right to enjoy those universal human rights \u2026 they overlook Islamophobic attacks and they show the twisted perception and mentality of the West,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In October, Erdogan told a massive protest crowd in Istanbul that his government was preparing to declare Israel a \u201cwar criminal\u201d due to its\u00a0actions in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government said in response that it would reassess its diplomatic relations with Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISTANBUL (AP) \u2014 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}