Erdoğan: We don't all have to be the same, but we must stick together

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said that Turkey should be a country of freedoms and ideals, not suspicions and fears. "We want all our people to express themselves and their opinions with constitutional legitimacy, and we want them to be included in the nation's educational, economic and social life," Erdogan said in a televised address. "We don't have to be the same as each other, but we have to be united and stand together. Our having different beliefs, ideas, and lifestyles is no obstacle to fellowship. It's our duty to bridge distances, if there are any." He said that in Turkey's democratic and legal order, every problem has a solution. Erdogan added that a country that views its own citizens as a threat can't go forward.