Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan grouped Zionism with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as a "crime against humanity" in a speech at a U.N. summit on tolerance held in Vienna on Wednesday, "Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it becomes unavoidable that Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity," Erdoğan said. Erdoğan was speaking at the fifth global forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was seated behind Erdoğan on the dais, did not react.
Erdoğan's comments echoed U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on Nov. 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), which determined "that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." The resolution was revoked in 1991 by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 4686.
"The status accorded to Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly [in recognizing it last November as a non-member observer state] was indeed a historic achievement. This has been a very important turning point in global peace," Erdoğan added.
The non-governmental monitoring organization U.N. Watch criticized Erdoğan's comments and urged all members of the alliances High-Level Group, which comprises eminent people, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, "to denounce remarks that fundamentally contradict the very purpose of a forum supposedly dedicated to mutual tolerance."
"Erdoğans misuse of this global podium to incite hatred, and his resort to Ahmadinejad-style pronouncements appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Muslim world, will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel," U.N. Watch said on its blog.
The Alliance of Civilizations was launched in 2005 by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with co-sponsorship from the prime ministers of Spain and Turkey. Based on the recommendations of a High-Level Group in November 2006, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Jorge Sampaio, former president of Portugal, as his representative for the Alliance of Civilizations. Since May 2007, Sampaio has been in charge of achieving the alliance's mission by developing a functional framework for action, setting an agenda, and building a network of stakeholders.
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