Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in an interview on Monday with The Washington Post, scolded those who link Islam to the terrorism of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that perpetrate violence in the name of Islam. “The coinage of such terms as ‘Islamic terrorism’ or ‘Islamo-fascism’, these have injured the Muslim people in the world, and it is best to avoid such characterizations,” Erdoğan said.

Asked whether he planned to communicate that to U.S. President George W. Bush, who frequently invokes such phrases in speeches, he said he has in the past. “In the same way as we consider anti-Semitism a crime against humanity”, he said, “Islamo-phobia is also a crime against humanity.”

Turkish Daily News, 4 October 2006

See also Washington Post, 3 October 2006