Erdogan blames UN for legitimising Egyptian coup

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised the UN on Wednesday for legitimising the military coup in Egypt and supporting its perpetrator Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi, Al-Amat Online reported.

The democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown by a military coup, he said, and yet the UN still chose to legitimise the person who conducted this coup.

In front of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York and in the presence of the coup leader, Al-Amat Online quoted Erdogan as saying that: “We should respect the choice of the people at the ballot box. If we want to support coups, then why does the UN even exist?”

Erdogan blamed the world for doing too little in dealing with many major global issues, while Turkey is trying to do more but without seeing any cooperation from the should-be partners.

Regarding the Syrian issue, he said Turkey sacrificed greatly, taking in more than a million Syrian refugees in addition to more than 140,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees last week alone.

“Despite our sacrifices and our expectations of solidarity, we have not received the kind of support we have been looking for from the international community,” he said.

He blamed the UN for its repeated failure to act when urgent action was needed. He cited the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people and the latest Israeli war on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, during which more than 2,000 people died.

The Turkish leader told world leaders that the UN as an international body should be more “brave” in addressing the world’s problems.

Blaming the five big powers in particular for restricting the international organisation, he said: “The world is bigger than the five,” referring to the five permanent Security Council members, which he accused of making the UN ineffective.