President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Saturday an apology was not enough to solve the NATO enemy chart problem, and added that NATO’s credibility was now dubious.
“Yesterday, you have witnessed the impudence at NATO exercise in Norway. The credibility of NATO has become questionable in the eyes of all member states. Some mistakes are not made by fools but by scum. The disrespectful behavior at the NATO drill cannot be solved with a simple apology,” Erdoğan said.
"I understand this impudence that targets me and founder of our republic Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a reflection of a distorted point of view that we observe in NATO for a while," the president added.
Turkish officials have slammed the incident during a NATO drill in Norway. Turkey withdrew from the Trident Javelin exercise after a civilian Norwegian official depicted Erdoğan as an "enemy collaborator" during a bloc exercise.
On Friday, Erdoğan told ruling Justice and Development (AK Party) Party members in capital Ankara that a portrait of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was also shown in the ‘hostile leader list’ during the computer-assisted exercise.
A Norwegian national was removed from the exercise as a consequence of the incident, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen have apologized to Turkey.