Erdogan: Turkey did not 'willingly' accept its borders

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on Saturday that his country's current borders were not redrawn of Turkish people's own accord.

Speaking to a public gathering in the western city of Bursa, Erdogan pointed out that Turkey's borders diminished from 20 million square kilometers to 780 thousand, reported private-owned Dogan news agency.

Erdogan was referring to Ottoman Empire's territorial evolution that is marked with losses particularly after the 17th century.

"Young people, look. The Republic [of Turkey] is not our first, but last state. Let me say that we have not accepted these borders willingly. Lest be forgotten, even some of the territories the founding cadres of the Republic were born in were left out of the borders of our new state," said the Turkish President.

Turkey's founder and first President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in the Greek city of Thessaloniki which was then still under Ottoman rule.

"We might have had to say 'yes' to [the news borders] so as to compose ourselves and breath a little with the influence of long-lived wars and continuous losses, but we are against the design of the state and society based on the sacrifice given in the controversial circumstances of the time. It is time to leave this behind," continued Erdogan.

Turkish President's remarks were in a rebuke to the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) which has criticized Erdogan's invocations of lost Ottoman territories.

Ataturk's CHP was the ruling and founding party of the new Turkish Republic that agreed to its modern borders and gave up parts of the Middle East, Balkans and Caucasus in the peace Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923 between Turkey and the allied France, Britain, Italy and Greece.

Erdogan once again cited the late Ottoman document "Misaki Milli" (National Oath) that claimed the Iraqi city of Mosul as Turkish soil in order to give grounds for his insistence on Turkey's participation in the ongoing operation to capture the city from the Islamic State (IS) group.

"Kirkuk and Mosul were ours in the past. Look at history," concluded Erdogan who went on promising not to allow "a terror corridor" in northern Syria where the United States-backed Kurds have set up a self-declared autonomous region after driving the IS from the area.

Editing by Ava Homa