In his address to the audience at this year’s Security Conference in the German city of Munich, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected to label Chechens as terrorists who fled North Caucasus to seek shelter in Turkey while he also made several other statements about terrorist attacks that have hit Turkey.
Erdoğan said that the Turkish Republic did not host hawkish Chechens after they fled North Caucasus.
When asked by a Russian delegate to comment on why terrorists who fled North Caucasus have taken shelter for a long time in Turkey, a country which is itself in fact fighting terrorism, the Turkish prime minister said that it would wrong to call Chechens terrorists after they came to Turkey from North Caucasus.
Some Chechens sought shelter in Turkey from the war in North Caucasus, said Erdoğan. "Some of the Chechens who fled Chechnya might be wounded. It would be wrong, however, to call anyone with wounds a terrorist. Even terrorism has its own criteria." (rusya.ru)
