Erdogan: Relations with Israel will not be restored

Erdogan: Relations with Israel will not be restored until Gaza siege is lifted

07/06/2012

ISTANBUL,(PIC)-- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his country will not looking at restoring relations with Israel unless it ends the unfair siege imposed on Gaza and implements Turkish conditions.

“The crisis over the matter of the occupation and relations with Israel is not harming the Turkish economy,” Erdogan confirmed during a reception in the gardens of the Dolmabahçe Palace during the regional World Economic Forum summit in Istanbul.

Erdogan told Maariv that normalizing relations between Turkey and Israel is conditional on three steps: “First and foremost, Israel must apologize for the raid by Israeli soldiers on the Mavi Marmara ship two years ago. Also, Israel must pay reparations to the families of the victims. The third condition is that Israel ends the naval blockade on the import of goods into the Gaza Strip,” adding that his country would not compromise on those conditions even if the crisis between the two nations deepens.

Erdogan accused the Jewish state of “killing innocent people, children, babies, women and the elderly in mass numbers” in aerial bombardments and by keeping people “in the largest open-air prison in the world,” referring to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Erdogan has surprised everyone when a reporter pointed out to the decrease of Israeli tourists’ number to Turkey “We do not need Israeli tourists. We have succeeded to fill their places, and, in the past year, 31 million tourists visited Turkey,” he said.

The Turkish Prime Minister affirmed that his country's' economy had witnessed a remarkable and unprecedented improvement in the last year where the Turkish exports exceeded $ 134 billion for the first time in the history of Turkey.

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