Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday accused the Myanmar administration of waging “Buddhist terror” on Rohingya Muslims in the country and slammed the Yangon government for carrying out a genocide against Muslim people in Rakhine state.
Speaking during the International Ombudsman Conference in İstanbul on Monday, Erdoğan lamented the failure of the international community to impose sanctions on the Myanmar government due to its campaign.
“There is a very clear genocide over there. I am saying it clearly, and they might be disturbed: Do those who speak to the world about ‘Islamic terrorism’ also talk about ‘Christian terrorism,’ ‘Jewish terrorism’ or ‘Buddhist terrorism’? No. They always show Buddhists as goodwill ambassadors. But actually there is ‘Buddhist terrorism’ going on in Myanmar right now,” Erdoğan said.
According to AFP, more than 430,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the border to Bangladesh from a military campaign which the UN says likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the stateless minority.
Before the most recent surge of violence, there were over 1 million Rohingyas in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state in the west of the overwhelmingly Buddhist country.
“No doubt they will now tear into Erdoğan. Let them do it. I don’t know how you can gloss over this with yoga, schmoga. This is a fact here. And all humanity needs to know it,” he added.
Erdoğan claimed that there would be tens of thousands of more casualties “if Turkey had not told the world” about the events in Myanmar.