Erdogan: linking ISIS with Islam encourages terrorist organizations

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told an audience in Chile that ISIS, which has declared a so-called Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014, has “nothing to do with Islam,” Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.

"Islam never allows terrorism; this is one. Secondly, Islam and terror cannot be mentioned together. Third, ISIS is a terror organization and it has nothing to do with Islam," Erdogan said during an address to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile.

Erdogan said that those who linked Islam with terrorism were giving support and courage to terrorist organizations, AA added

“On the contrary, ISIS is harming Islam with what it does,” said Erdogan, warning that the approach of associating terror with a religion or an ethnic group empowered xenophobia and racism which he described as a “disgrace the history of humanity.”