U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem united all parties in the international political sphere, as well as Turkey's domestic political scene, Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said Monday.
In an exclusive interview with the Turkish daily Hürriyet, Kalın said Trump's decision had two dimensions: one was a domestic election promise, while the other was a grave miscalculation of reactions that would come from around the world.
"Several conflicts in the Islamic world, the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia, sectarian tensions, ongoing civil wars and terror might have led them to expect that no strong unity, solidarity would come from the Muslim countries," Kalın said, assuming a possible expectation of the White House.
"But look, Jerusalem united us all. It united Turkish politics too. Four political parties in [Turkey's] parliament, as well as conflicting countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, signed the same declaration. From Europe to Africa, from Vatican to Christians in the Middle East, a consensus has been formed," he added.
Kalın stated that the main problem in the Palestinian question is Israel's occupation, and Israel itself and its supporters insistently resort to various tactics and strategies to make the world forget about the occupation. He explained that differentiating Arabs, demonizing Palestinians is a part of this policy, in which Israel legitimizes using violence in the eyes of the West by saying that it faces an irrational, authoritarian, terrorist, anti-liberties and anti-women, patriarchal, emotional mass, adding that this approach poisoning the Islam-West and Muslim-Jewish relations has systematically been in use since 1967.
In the interview, Kalın also explained the process that ultimately led the United Nations General Assembly to overwhelmingly reject the U.S. move with a resolution backed by 128 countries. He said that as signals of Trump's decision started to come, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan drew a roadmap first and said that he will conduct an extensive telephone diplomacy, and later called for an extraordinary summit as the term president of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Kalın said that Erdoğan had spent tremendous effort on this issue and there has been a significant back-door diplomacy conducted by Turkish officials.
"We actually explained to our American counterparts that Jerusalem cannot unilaterally be recognized as Israel's capital and that this does not match Jerusalem's historic and religious facts and it would not benefit the Middle East peace process, and that these decisions would not be backed by anyone else in the world. They did not listen and faced a great fiasco. What took place is a great achievement for the cause of Palestine, whereas it is a great fiasco for the Trump administration. One cannot conduct diplomacy in the 21st century with policies of threat, pressure and blackmail," Kalın said.
