Erdoğan: Our Only Concern Is Islam, Islam, Islam

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday radical terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is damaging the perception of Islam all over the world by engaging in acts of violence that have no place in the religion, adding, "Our only concern is Islam, Islam, Islam."

Paying an official visit to the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on Friday, Erdoğan spoke on the recently launched anti-terrorism campaign against ISIL and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) following a deadly bombing that claimed 32 lives in Suruç, a town in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa. He emphasized that ISIL, like many other terrorist organizations, oppresses people both at home and abroad and that Turkey is now facing the ISIL threat in its territory.

"There is no place for acts of violence in Islam. Our belief encourages peace, not violence. But when you look at some Muslims, you see them defending atheists even though they [atheists] are terrorists just because these Muslims are from a different sect [of Islam]," Erdoğan said.

Stressing that the numerous videos of ISIL terrorists beheading their captives have dealt a serious blow to the image of Islam around the globe, Erdoğan argued that Ankara has never supported ISIL as claimed by certain "dark circles."

Though Erdoğan rejects any link to ISIL, local and international media outlets have claimed the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was involved in supplying weapons and ammunition to ISIL and other extremist groups fighting Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime since 2011, when a civil war broke out in the country.

Erdoğan said the latest picture of the Islamic world suggests it is at a critical crossroads, adding: "One of the crucial problems of the Islamic world is on sectarian divisions. Those terrorists who engage in hate crimes against humanity are taking advantage of these divisions. However, Islam forbids the killing of a person unjustly and considers it equivalent to killing all of humanity. Turkey makes no distinction between Sunni and Shiite members of Islam and does not follow a policy based on sectarian divisions. Our only concern is Islam, Islam, Islam.”

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)