President Barack Obama on Tuesday called the Middle East conflict unsustainable and urged Muslims to see it from a new aspect.
“In the Muslim world, this notion that somehow everything is the fault of the Israelis lacks balance, because there’s two sides to every question,” Obama told a town hall meeting of international students here. “That doesn’t mean that sometimes one side has done something wrong and should not be condemned.”
The president added, “I say the same thing to my Jewish friends.”
Obama’s remarks came on the final day of a weeklong trip through Europe that ended with two days in Turkey, where he urged Muslims — through his student audience — to look past images of the ugly American.
“I know that the stereotypes of the United States are out there, and I know that many of them are informed not by direct exchange or dialogue, but by television shows and movies and misinformation,” he said. “Sometimes it suggests that America has become selfish and crass or that we don’t care about the world beyond us. And I’m here to tell you that that’s not the country I know.”
The message was one he carried throughout his trip, where the overarching mission was putting some distance between this administration and the policies and conduct of the previous one under former President George W. Bush.
“I am personally committed to a new chapter in American engagement,” Obama told the students. “We can’t afford to talk past one another and focus only on our differences, or to let the walls of mistrust go up around us.”
For Obama, it was one of several entreaties made during two stops in Turkey, all aimed at restoring frayed relations with a key strategic ally.
In a busy final day before midafternoon departure, Obama toured important Turkish historical sites. At the Blue Mosque, the president — shoeless in accordance with Muslim custom — looked at stained glass, ancient and intricate mosaics, and soaring domes. He also visited the Hagia Sophia Museum — constructed as a cathedral by Roman Emperor Justinian the Great in 437 and later converted to a mosque by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror when his Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453. The president called the building “spectacular.”
Resuming tourist diplomacy represents a sharp departure from Bush, who did not place a premium on flattering world leaders with interest in their history and culture. Such visits hold particular significance in Istanbul, the historic crossroads of Europe and Asia and the former seat of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which over the span of centuries threatened and then was carved up by Western powers.
Obama also strongly endorsed Turkey’s aspirations for joining the European Union and met with a group of Turkish religious leaders.
Turkey, a secular democracy in the Middle East, shares an open border with Iran and has been pushing the United States to improve relations there. Turkey strongly opposed the war in Iraq and refused to allow U.S. troops to enter Iraq from its side of the border.
