EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’ comments on Zionism “unacceptable.”
In response to a question at a press conference following a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on Monday in Brussels, Ashton said she saw reports on Erdogan’s comments, at a UN-sponsored forum last week in Vienna, calling Zionism a “crime against humanity” and equating it to racism, islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
“This is unacceptable”, she said.
Twenty members of the European Parliament have called on the EU Foreign Ministers to condemn Erdogan’s remarks, in a letter to Catherine Ashton.
“We condemn this statement in no uncertain terms and call on you to do the same at the next Foreign Affairs Council meeting on 11 March. Anything short of a firm rebuke is insufficient,” they wrote.
“We have heard statements like these before, but what makes this situation even more troubling is that it comes from a leader of a country seeking to join our Union. Thus, we have a further obligation to speak out against these acts, not simply in defense of Israel but in promotion of our core values of tolerance and democracy,” they added.
The EU has come under criticism both from Israeli officials and from various Jewish organizations for not joining the White House, US Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the Foreign Ministers of Canada, Germany and Austria in denouncing Erdogan’s comments.
At a meeting last week with visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso declared: “We didn’t agree with Mr Erdogan’s statement and we made it clear that we couldn’t agree at all with it."