Turkish PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey's prime minister said on Saturday that there was no need to give more right to speak to the Iraqi prime minister. Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan said if they gave more right to speak to Nuri al-Maliki, this would give him an opportunity to perform a show. "There is no need to give any opportunity to him to provide prestige," al-Maliki told reporters in Istanbul as he returned from Qatar. Erdogan's remarks came after al-Maliki's remarks that "Turkey was becoming an enemy state in the region in a sign of growing tensions between Turkey and Iraq" and "Turkey had started to intervene in Iraqi internal affairs". "The Foreign Ministry has given an answer to al-Maliki. As we said in our written statement, Turkey has always embraced Iraqi people and stood by them in their hard times," Erdogan said. Erdogan said Turkey had signed 48 agreements in the worst days of Iraq, which indicated the importance Turkey attached to the country. Turkey had been in contact with every belief group and political party so far, and would continue to do so because of brotherhood ties, Erdogan said. Erdogan said Turkey would never discriminate between Sunnis or Shiites, and meet all of them. "Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens are all our brothers, and al-Maliki's stance will never separate us from our Iraqi brothers," Erdogan also said. Erdogan warned against the latest situation in Iraq in a press conference earlier this week and signaled a troubling trend in the war-torn country under the current prime minister. Erdogan blames al-Maliki for excluding Sunnis from power structures.
