The other day in Istanbul an unfortunate event took place, which deeply saddened our nation. We have lost eleven of our brothers, eleven of our citizens due to a fire in Esenyurt. First of all Allah may rest their souls in peace. I want to extend my condolences and sympathies to friends and families of our deceased worker brothers. My distinguished friends, No one’s life is worthless. Especially the lives of workers and low-income earners are not worthless. We cannot accept the fact how some business owners, who make sizeable amounts of money, could ignore the security and safety of the workers that work for them. We are going to bring those who are responsible for it to justice in order to ease the pains of widows and orphans of our deceased workers. We are going to thoroughly investigate this sad incident that took place in Esenyurt. Our Minister of Labor and Social Security, Mayor, and Chief of Police immediately visited the...

In two days we are going to celebrate International Women’s Day and I want to sincerely congratulate all the women of the world and the faithful, rugged, and honorable women of our country in advance. On March 8th we will be in Mardin attending a series of opening ceremonies while enthusiastically celebrating the International Women’s Day with our sisters in Mardin. Hopefully we will give the most meaningful message to the women of the world from a world city, Mardin. For the past nine years AK Party Governments have worked very hard to improve our democracy, economy, peace, security, and consistency. We are working day and night to make Turkey a much more developed country in the fields of education, healthcare, justice, and security. We are also assuming an active role to end the wars, conflicts, and crises while promoting peace, cooperation, and tolerance in the world. Undoubtedly we are doing all this in the name of humanity...

I wish from Allah that our Group Meeting would be good for our country and nation. The second and final part of my medical procedure –the first part was performed on November 26th- was performed on February 10th. After a brief rest I am back at work. God willing I will continue to work at an increasing pace. I want to express my sincere gratitude to our President, Speaker of the Parliament, chairmen and executives of political parties, our ministers, deputies, all the members of our organization, and chairmen and executives of our non-governmental organizations. I especially want to thank our dear nation for their good wishes. I witnessed an emotional and exciting welcome at Esenboğa Airport by thousands of our brothers and sisters despite the late hour and cold weather. I want to thank all our citizens who caravanned all the way from the airport to downtown. As long as Allah give me strength and life my heart will continue to beat first...

I salute you with my dearest feelings and I wish that weekly Group Meeting of AK Party would bring good to our country, nation, and democracy. At the beginning of my speech I want to express my condolences and sympathy for the public prosecutor and our brother Hakan Kılıç, who was attacked in Doğubeyazıt town of Ağrı the other day and lost his life in Ankara this morning. May Allah rest his soul in peace. He was brought to Ankara with an air ambulance of our Ministry of Health and was taken to intensive care. Unfortunately he could not be saved despite all the efforts. I strongly condemn this horrible attack and extend my condolences to his friends, family, and to our dear nation. I also want to extend my condolences for our very distinguished teacher İbrahim Subaşı, who dedicated his life to science and educated many youngsters. May Allah rest his soul peace in heaven. My distinguished friends, In Hama, Syria a very sad...

Our very distinguished guests, My very distinguished deputy friends, Ladies and Gentlemen: I salute you all with love and regards. I wish from Allah that our group meeting would bring good to our people, country, and democracy. We had another busy week full of parliamentary work. We also had important meetings concerning our foreign policy. After our Group Meeting last week, I met with the Speaker of Parliament for Gagauzia Ana Harlamenco. On Thursday I had a meeting with Leader of Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Ammar al-Hakim. Friday I met with High Representative for Alliance of Civilizations Mister Sampaio first and then with Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami. On Saturday the forth meeting of Ministers of Foreign Relations for the High Level Strategic Dialogue of Turkish-Gulf Cooperation Council took place in Istanbul. We had lunch with the representatives of United Arab...

I salute you with my dearest feelings and I wish from Allah that our Group Meeting would bring many good things. We did not have our Group Meeting last week as we attended the funeral ceremony of late Rauf Denktaş, the founding President of Turkish Repuplic of Northern Cyprus. I extend my sympathies and condolences to his family, friends, Turkish Cypriots, and our dear nation. May Allah rest his soul in peace. Last week we attended to two important ceremonies in Ankara and Istanbul. On January 14th we started to install the rails for Project Marmaray in Istanbul. Connecting the two continents using underwater tubes is a 150-year-old dream and project. AK Party Government turned this dream into reality in August 2004 and started the construction of the project. Some legal rulings delayed the construction process but the project has been implemented with utter decisiveness. We have moved on to a significant phase in the project by installing...

My friends, Ladies and Gentlemen: I salute you with love and regards. I wish from Allah that our weekly Group Meeting would bring good to our country, nation, and democracy. We had a week full of important developments in our country, region, and world. Unfortunately we are very sad to witness bloodshed in our region in the first week of 2012. We observe the escalation of the violence and massacres in Syria due to the actions of the al-Assad Administration and the provocations. Unfortunately a suicide bombing took the lives of 25 Syrian citizens. More than 6 thousand people have lost their lives in Syria since beginning of the uprising. We also observe in Iraq that the tension is mounting and the political crisis causing great number of deaths. We have lost hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters in Iraq since 2003. Unfortunately more than 100 Iraqis lost their lives due to attacks in all over Iraq. We see efforts to initiate a...

Distinguished deputy friends, Ladies and Gentlemen: I salute you all with love and regards in this first group meeting of 2012 and I wish this group meeting would bring good to our country, nation, and democracy. While hoping that 2012 would bring good to our country, nation, and to the entire humanity, I also wish from Allah that this year would bring health, welfare, blessing, and peace. At the beginning of my speech I want to express my gratitude to our AK Party Group, ministers, deputies, and all the members of our organization for all their good wishes upon my recent illness. I want to thank our President, Speaker of the Parliament, chairmen of the opposition parties, all the deputies in the Assembly, non-governmental organizations, media, and all our friends, brothers, and sisters for their good wishes. I also want to express my sincere and deepest gratitude to our dear people from all over our country and to our fellow...

Distinguished guests, My very distinguished deputy friends, Ladies and Gentlemen: I salute you all with my dearest feelings in this weekly group meeting of AK Party. Once again I welcome all our guests attending to our group meeting today. I wish from Allah that our meeting would bring to our country, nation, and democracy. My distinguished brothers and sisters, We had a very busy week. Last Tuesday after our group meeting we had meetings with the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe Mister Jagland, who came to Turkey to attend a conference organized by our Ministry of Justice, and then with Hungarian President Mister Pal Schmitt, who came here for a formal visit. On Wednesday we attended to a meaningful meeting organized by our Ministry of Family and Social Policies. Our Ministry of Family and Social Policies made an extensive nationwide research on women, who lost their spouses. The research revealed that 150 thousand women are...

Very distinguished guests, My very distinguished deputy friends, Dear guests, I salute you all with love and regards. I wish that our weekly group meeting would bring good to our country, nation, and democracy. At the beginning of speech I want to honor the loving memory of Bahri Zengin Beye, whom we lost this past week and who contributed greatly to our political and intellectual life. I extend my condolences to his family and friends. My distinguished friends, As you all know we had another earthquake, which had the magnitude of 5.6, in Edremit town of Van on November 9th. 25 buildings that were damaged in the previous earthquake collapsed. Out of those 25 buildings, 22 of them were empty. However, we lost 40 of our citizens in three buildings, two of them being hotels. Everybody is asking why those three buildings were not emptied and why the state did not doing anything about it. Those 22 buildings would not be empty if the state did...