Fatin Rustu Zorlu, Foreign Minister of Turkey, today defended his government’s policy toward Israel following charges in the Grand National Assembly yesterday that he had attempted to “sacrifice” Israel to Arab demands and had thus aided in sidetracking the main purposes of the Bagdad Pact and turning that alliance into an anti-Israel instrument.
Commenting on the events of the recent Bagdad Pact Council meeting here, he asserted that Turkey had not attempted to sacrifice Israel, but had drawn NATO attention to the causes of unrest in the Middle East. He also told the Parliament that the Palestine problem was a “cause of unrest” in the region and a major reason for Soviet penetration.
The Minister insisted that the pact was directed only against aggression from the North–the USSR–and that Turkey had not become, as the Opposition charged–“Iraq’s tool on the Israeli question. ” He denied that the Arab states were angry with Turkey and challenged the Republican People’s Party, from whose ranks his bittered tormentors were drawn, to say whom it was trying to please–Israel or the Arab states.
The first attack on the government was launched by Nedjait liter, a Republican spokesman, who said the government had joined Iraq in a “request to NATO to sacrifice Israel.” This, M. liter pointed out, had come at the very time that Iraq was voting in the United Nations against the Turkish position on Cyprus. Another Republican deputy, Turgut Gole, said that instead of improving the likelihood of an Arab-Israel settlement the last pact meeting had only caused more discord.
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