Erdoğan on why no U.S. military intervention in Syria: “maybe it’s because of the elections”

On the Wednesday, September 5th edition of Amanpour,  Christiane Amanpour spoke with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a wide-ranging interview covering the humanitarian crisis inside Syria, challenges to democracy and media freedom inside Turkey, and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.  Specifically to a question regarding whether he believes that the U.S. election is to blame for why America has not engaged Syria militarily, Mr. Erdoğan said:

“Right now, there are certain things being expected from the United States.  The United States had not yet catered to those expectations.  Maybe it’s because of the elections; maybe it’s because of the pre- election situation in the States. Might be the root cause of this lacking of initiative. Nobody has spoken to us about their reasons, and they are not obliged to state anything.  We are very thankful and pleased that they have stated that they’re against this regime.

And that’s exactly what we expect from Russia and China.  We want them to state at least they are opposing this regime.  Bashar al-Assad could be dispatched to another country, and peace could be prevailing.  Peace could be established. ”

Amanpour airs weekdays on CNN International at 3:00pm with a replay at 5:00pm Eastern in the U.S.   The full transcript for this edition of this program is available here.  In Europe, Amanpour airs on CNN Internatioanl at 21:00 CET, with a replay at 23:00 CET.

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