ANKARA - ``Turkey will continue to seek peace and advocate justice in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Recent war in the Middle East has been triggering fury and violence, and further strengthening terrorism. This war is not fair. There will be no winners. On the contrary, it will lead to the defeat of the humanity as a whole,`` Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.
In a televised address to the nation, Erdogan said, ``we want peace, tranquillity, prosperity and justice for the humanity. Unfortunately, the humanity failed to preserve peace and universal values at the age of scientific and technical developments. Today, there are heart-wrenching wars and clashes all over the world. And the industrialized countries, shamefully, cannot keep innocent and defenseless people out of this picture of blood and tears. The humanity should feel the twinge of conscience. Any understanding killing innocent people and destroying cities cannot be justified whatever its motives are. Those who are sowing the seeds of hatred today, should remember that they will need peace and justice for themselves some day in the future.``
``People in the Middle East have still been suffering from endless clashes and bloodshed. I want to reiterate that Turkey is ready to do everything in its power to end those people`s suffering and to provide peace to the region,`` he said.
Calling on Israel to put an immediate end to use disproportionate force, Erdogan said, ``we guaranteed Israeli authorities to find and hand over those kidnapped soldiers. However, we failed to convince them to declare a cease-fire. We hope the international community and especially the United Nations Security Council will take urgent action.``
Erdogan recalled that the Turkish Red Crescent had begun dispatching humanitarian aid to the region.
``No one should expect us to remain silent. We will never give up our hopes for a peaceful world. We believe that peace will prevail one day,`` he emphasized. -PKK TERROR-
``The terrorist organization PKK has been continuing to kill our citizens. Our patience is about to exhaust. We will pursue our fight against the terrorist organization with great determination and belief,`` PM Erdogan emphasized.
Referring to the Cyprus issue, he said, ``embargoes imposed unfairly on the Turkish Cypriot people for years, should come to an end now. Both Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) are ready to fulfil their commitments to reach a fair and lasting solution on the island. As we pointed out in our Action Plan on January 24th (2006), all restrictions should be lifted by the relevant parties simultaneously till a solution is reached. This will be the first step on the path leading to the settlement. No one can expect Turkey to make unilateral concessions in this process.``
``We are determined to extend all kinds of support to the TRNC to accomplish its economic and social development. TRNC economy has grown steadily in the last four years. Turkish Cypriot authorities set their growth rate target for the year 2006 as 7.1 percent. In the meantime, Turkey`s annual financial assistance to the TRNC climbed from 80 million USD to 360 million USD between 1974 and 2005`` he added. -ECONOMIC INDICATORS-
Touching on economic developments within the country, Prime Minister Erdogan said, ``recent economic turbulence in the world had a small and temporary impact on our interest rates and disinflation targets. We will preserve our medium and long-term objectives. Today, the Turkish economy has a sound structure capable to deal with all kinds of turbulence both on the national and global levels. As a result of rooted reforms accomplished in the last four years, Turkish economy has become a powerful and reliable one with a sustainable growth. We succeeded in reducing inflation to 7.7 percent in 2005. Even if we face some small increases in inflation due to local or global fluctuations, we do not expect any deviation in our medium and long-term targets.``
Giving information about export figures, Erdogan said, ``Turkey`s exports were merely 36 billion USD in 2002. In 2005, exports reached 73.4 billion USD. On the other hand, when we look at the export figures in the first seven months (of 2006), we see that exports reached a record level of 43.7 billion USD. We hope that year-end exports will be not less than 80 billion USD.``
``Another important element of our economy is direct foreign investments. They reached 9.7 billion USD in 2005. This is a record in the history of Turkey. In the first five months of 2006, those investments attained 8.1 billion USD,`` he said.