ANKARA
The spouse of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mrs. Emine Erdogan said "if mothers cry in a country and groan with the grief of losing a child, there cannot be peace, brotherhood and sovereignty in this country".
Erdogan spoke at a panel called "Being mother in Turkey, our mothers" at the ATO Congresium Centre in Turkish capital of Ankara on Wednesday.
Emphasizing that millions of photographs were seen everyday via television and computer screens, Erdogan said that, among those pictures, some of them could not be sensitively dwelled on and thought on carefully.
Reminding about a photograph from Gaza which was shown on TV last year, Erdogan stated that "A mother had lost her life in a merciless attack and was laid down on a stretcher. A baby with teat in his mouth was crying next to his mother's dead body."
Erdogan added "That baby did not know what death was, did not understand what happened to the mother and could not understand why the mother did not breastfeed her baby".
Erdogan pointed out to similar photographes in Gaza and underlined "we also see heartbreaking photographes from Myanmar, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq".
"Heartbreaking photographs like these have also been taken in Syria over two years. Lastly, we saw tragic and shocking images from Baniyas, a city of Syria. Believe that even angels cannot look at these sufferings", said Erdogan.
"Unfortunately, the whole world ignores these images and immediately change channels, go to next page or shut their eyes off. Whether we see or not in this region, either mothers next to their children or children next to their mothers continue to witness these sufferings," Erdogan also said.
