Erdoğan Speaks at Brookings, His Guards Attack Journalists

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has spoken at the panel held at one of the leading think tanks, Brookings Institute in Washington in the United States.

Presidential guards attacked on the journalists ahead of the meeting in front of the building. Things got tense during the protests which started before Erdoğan came to the building.

Memleketimizi mukkemel temsil eden Eleman odul & terfi hak etti. @BrookingsInst girisinde dururken Kaltak" dedi bana pic.twitter.com/DDJEHZ6wlp

— Amberin Zaman (@amberinzaman) 31 Mart 2016

The Employee excellently representing our country deserved reward & promotion. He called me "Bitch' as standing at the entrance of @BrookingsInst

Journalist Amberin Zaman, and İlhan Tanır from Cumhuriyet daily announced the rough intervention on Twitter.

Erdoğan’s speech

Erdoğan started his speech by giving information on the bomb attack launched against riot squad vehicle:

Erdoğan remarking “Terror operating under different covers continues to target our citizens with courage they take. We have no patience left for this” said, “Despite all this, we sustain our fight by making no concessions from democracy, freedoms, law state”.

Erdoğan said a troublesome period is being lived now with Russia after Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) shot down Russian jet on November 24, 2015.

What sort of freedom is that?

Erdoğan frequently touched upon the issue of “terror”:

“We informed Belgium about the terrorist in Gaziantep. Thought we informed Belgium, Belgium released him. After the release, we witnessed the disaster at the [Brussels] airport. Bu in the same way, a terrorist who killed a businessman of ours stays freely in Belgium. It has been 10 years since we asked him to be delivered to us, but it still didn’t happen. The response we receive was ‘we favor freedoms’. What sort of freedom is that?”

In response to questions about imprisoned journalists, Erdoğan frequently used the term ‘so-called journalists’ and spelled the number of imprisoned journalists as 52. Then he stated that only seven out of them are journalists but only two of them have yellow press cards.

Erdoğan added that four of the seven are tried over being member of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and three of them over being member of Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ). (HK/TK)