Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to questions on the latest decisions of the European Human Rights Court. Erdogan said that the decision of the European Human Rights Court was parallel to the steps adopted by the Turkish Constitutional Court on the subject. “Whether religion is indicated or not on the identity cards would not change much. I don’t think the decision of the EHRC is an unusual decision.”
Erdogan said that he regarded the second decision of the court which rejected the requests of Kurdish citizens to use letters not present in the Turkish alphabet to write their names, as being very important.
Erdogan also emphasized that Turkey had no intention to change the existing order in the Middle East. He stated that the world was in a process of change and every nation would get it share of this change. He said that many countries in the Middle East held international meetings regarding issues of democracy, laicism and establishment of a state of law.
Source: ntvmsnbc (Turkey), February 3, 2010
