Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Your targets can only be realized on the basis of dreams.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

My legal bond with the A.K.P. may have ended the day I took the presidential oath of office, but my bonds of love have never ended and never will.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

It is impossible to preserve my friendship with people who are allegedly leaders when they are attacking their own people, shooting at them, using tanks and other forms of heavy weaponry.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

However, democracy cannot be defined as the existence of parliaments and elections alone.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

In other words, the bar should be maintained at the level of a pluralistic and participatory democracy.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

But foremost, I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Everyone should unconditionally accept that Israel is an indispensable element of the Middle Eastern mosaic.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There exists an unmistakable demand in the Middle East and in the wider Muslim world for democratization.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There are people who say that "Gül can't be my president". These people don't have good manners for and they should renounce their Turkish citizenship foremost this man will be chosen democratically by the people.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Every instigator or madman, who will dare to raise his hand against the government, let him be sure that the government will chop it off.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

We are all human beings. (original: Hepimiz insanız)

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There is but one alternative for Turkey. Either African barbarism, under Arabian direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish strong leadership, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Africa and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

...it's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Those who do not want to take a side will be eliminated (read as: irrelevant for) from the process.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb were not and never will be Jewish sites.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

In my country there are 170,000 Armenians. Seventy thousand of them are citizens. We tolerate 100,000 more. So, what am I going to do tomorrow? If necessary I will tell the 100,000: OK, time to go back to your country. Why? They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There is no difference between killing a baby in its mother's stomach and killing a baby after birth.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

I consider abortion to be murder. No-one should have the right to allow this to happen.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There is a trouble called Twitter, the finest lies are here. Nowadays, social media is actually the headache of societies.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men. You cannot make women work in the same jobs as men do, as in communist regimes. You cannot give them a shovel and tell them to do their work. This is against their delicate nature.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

What women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal. Because equality turns the victim into an oppressor and vice versa.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

As Muslims, we cannot overcome our difficulties without achieving unity in spite of our differences.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

A woman who says 'because I am working I will not be a mother' is actually denying her feminity.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

A woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Europe, you don't want us because the majority of our population are Muslim ... We knew it but we tried to show our sincerity.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

It is impossible to preserve my friendship with people who are allegedly leaders when they are attacking their own people, shooting at them, using tanks and other forms of heavy weaponry.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan

However, democracy cannot be defined as the existence of parliaments and elections alone.

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan