[AlAhram] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
on Monday urged the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
and West to step up backing of Ankara's fight against Kurdish Lion of Islams, as he addressed a meeting of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
politicians.
Erdogan said he expected the support of NATO countries in
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
's fight against "all terror groups" including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS) jihadists and the group blamed by Ankara for the failed July 15 coup.
He called on the European Union to tighten its approach to the PKK, which Brussels designates as a terror group but whose members, according to Erdogan, are allowed to roam freely within the bloc.
"Those who have a hesitant attitude against terrorist organizations will be hit themselves sooner or later," he said in a speech to deputies at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 but its bid to join the European Union has been further set back by disputes over the magnitude of its crackdown in the wake of the coup.
Erdogan had at the weekend mooted that Turkey could join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a loose security and economic bloc led by Russia and China sometimes seen as an eastern counterpart to NATO.
But he did not refer to this in his speech in Istanbul to the NATO meeting.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meanwhile emphasised the alliance's "solidarity" with Turkey in the wake of the coup and said Ankara "has the right" to prosecute those responsible.
Pressed by a Dutch politician to condemn the crackdown that has seen over 35,000 enjugged
You have the right to remain silent...
, Stoltenberg said he had told Turkish leaders all measures had to be taken within the rule of law.
He said he welcomed cooperation between Turkey and the Council of Europe over the legal measures after the coup, saying this should be an "important tool" to ensure the rule of law and human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
are applied.
Stoltenberg also made no reference to Turkish officers serving in NATO command posts who he had said last week had asked for asylum following the failed coup.
Meanwhile,
...back at the pond, the radioactive tadpoles grown into frogs. Really big frogs, in fact...
he added he wanted to see "more assurance measures" from NATO states to help Turkey on its unstable borders, in addition to the current surveillance flights and deployment of missile batteries on the Syrian frontier.