Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Besir Atalay accused the
“Jewish Diaspora” and other foreign agents of orchestrating recent unrest that
has rocked Istanbul and other cities.
Atalay made the comments during a visit to the Central
Anatolian province of Kırıkkale on Monday.
“There are some circles that are jealous of Turkey’s
growth,” Atalay said, according to a report from the Hurriyet Daily News. “They
are all uniting, on one side the Jewish Diaspora. You saw the foreign media’s
attitude during the Gezi Park incidents; they bought it and started
broadcasting immediately, without doing an evaluation of the [case].”
The demonstrations began in late May after police used tear
gas and water cannon to smash a sit-in protest in Istanbul’s Taksim Square
against the removal of the adjacent Gezi public park to make way for a mall and
reconstructed army barracks.
The public response quickly swelled into a tide of protests
against the government across Turkey, though focused in Istanbul, that
continued throughout June with violent clashes between demonstrators and riot
police that killed three campaigners and one police officer.
According to Hurriyet, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
claimed several times that an “interest rate lobby” along with world media were
responsible for the spread of the riots.
A number of Turkish commentators and lower-level officials
have accused Jewish groups and others of conspiring to engineer the protests
and fell Erdogan.
Tensions between Israel and Turkey became strained in recent
years following violent clashes in 2010 when Israeli forces boarded the Mavi
Marmara ferry that was leading a flotilla to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza.
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