Turkey's Interior Minister Soylu Blames Allies

Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has accused certain allies of attempting to destabilize the country and of concealing information regarding last year's terrorist attack on Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, as reported by Yeni Şafak newspaper.

“Some countries known as 'friends and allies' have adopted the stance of ‘Whatever it takes, just not stability in Turkey.’ Don’t we know that those behind the attack on Istiklal Avenue were the very people you shook hands with? Don’t we know that you were running around our security organization, our intelligence units, thinking, ‘I wonder if they did this with our weapons?’ We know who they are; those who have seemed like friends and allies to us for years and tried to stab us like a snake,” Soylu said, referring to the United States.

According to him, if Turkey were to fail, it would be treated as a “colonial detachment.” He added, “Today they are using various tricks because Turkey is successful. They had high hopes for this winter. If you knew so much, why didn’t you inform Turkey about the PKK/YPG’s (the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey) attack on Istiklal Avenue? Because you were also behind the events of July 15 (referring to the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, according to official Ankara). We are facing international action,” the Turkish Interior Minister stated.