From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Turkey is an important country by any measure. In the eyes of its critics, it is becoming authoritarian and less tolerant. The country is both modern and old, islamic and secular, gdp growth of 4 . Look at its geography between the mediterranean and the black sea. It is bordered by eight countries bulgaria, armenia, greece, georgia, azerbaijan, syria, iraq, iran. Many have fled across the border. The turkish republic was founded after the end of the ottoman empire. Many credit the first president with creating turkey as a modern and secular nation. I went to istanbul for a rare interview with tayyip erdogan. He was considered a man who could be a bridge between the west and islamist world. Erdogan today is the source of some controversy. Hes accused of coming down hard on anyone who opposes him. What are and youtube have been banned. Demonstrators have been violently dispersed. Some fear that in the process he is creating a more polarized turkey with the deep divisions. His most intense conflict is with a man who lives in selfimposed exile in pennsylvania. He is a preacher and the founder of the Gulen Movement with founders across the world. Many serving the turkish government and the police and judiciary. He stopped short of calling it genocide, yet he went further than any other turkish leader had gone before and was praised for taking the step. I spoke with Prime Minister erdogan friday night of last week. Mr. Prime minister, thank you for taking time out of a busy day to see me. Im back in one of my favorite cities in the world. I thank you very much. Im glad to meet you in istanbul. Im very pleased we are able to meet here. Much has happened since i saw you last. Your party did well. What is the significance of that . It is a vote of confidence. The next election is for president. Will you be running for president . And we will convene next week and we will consult. By midmay, we will probably announce the decision. This has been an important week because of the statement you made on armenia. It is something i have said for a long time. Every time that i have said this, i said it was the ottoman citizens that were armenian. People belonging to other ethnicities died in the event. I always said that it is very natural and it is a right for all of the cities to remember their suffering and we have to respect that. They were citizens of the ottoman empire, who were our our ancestors. What happened to those people and its remembrance is something that we have to respect. We have, and our territory, many are citizens. Some who have passports and some who do not. There are some who live here without passports but we do not send those people away. They continue to live in our country. We also respect the rights, beliefs, freedoms of armenians. We will continue to protect those rights. They would obviously like for you to use the word genocide. Is it possible for the Prime Minister to characterize it as genocide . It is not possible. If such a genocide had been the case, would there be armenians living in this country . We have today citizens who have passports and armenians who are here in our country who have left armenian. We do not exclude them. We do not send them back. They make a living in our country. They continue to live in our country. We are a people who see genocide as a crime against humanity and we would never turn a blind eye to such action. We always say that this is a responsibility for the historians. Our archives are open. Historians can come and look at the archives. We have military archives as well. If armenia has archives, they can open theirs, too. They could also make documents available and we could establish a commission made up of historians, legal experts, political scientists who could then look at those documents. They would then come up with a reported and we could all respect those reports. This is exploiting the situation and i dont think that we should accept that. There is no reason why we should have any sort of doubt or suspicion. No one has the right to say that. You are saying we should recognize their suffering. Is there an apology there . These are our ancestors. This is not something that happened in the republic of turkey. This was during the ottoman empire. These are events that happened during migration and the documents are very interesting. If the documents show that our ancestors made a mistake end of historians can show, we would not restrained from making an apology and we would pay whatever the consequence of that is. Let me turn it to other places there may be news coming. One is israel. Because of president obama and Prime Minister netanyahu, there was a policy over you on the telephone and there have been discussions about compensation and other things. Where does that stand . When is it necessary to see a full relationship and an exchange of ambassadors . Thank you for this question. I would like to thank president obama, my friend, for his efforts in this respect because that was a step that was possible through his efforts. It was as a result of president obamas efforts. There is the issue of compensation here. We have come to an agreement with respect to compensation. With respect to sending humanitarian aid to the people in palestine is the other side of the negotiation. We can move towards a process of mobilization and i have already spoken to my colleagues at the foreign ministry. I think we are talking about days and weeks in this respect and i just hope that it will not change things. In a matter of weeks, there may be full recognition between turkey and israel. It may begin. The First Step Towards that process would be the step taken by the sending of ambassadors. Then there is the question of the kurds. You have begun a process. Where is the process . Are you optimistic . This is a Peace Process or a solution of the issue. The government has taken a very firm step in this respect. Despite all of these steps, the separatists have created some problems, especially in that region. I can say that we are at quite a good stage despite some of the difficulties. We look to the principles of democracy. We are not talking about an organization with arms and threats. What we are looking forward to is a process of discussion, consultation, ideas. What we would like to see is to have this process of discussion and conversation with the process leading to the election as well. That is the democratic process. Now to the matter of mr. Gulen. What happened between you and him . After i became Prime Minister, i had not had any meetings with him other than a few phone conversations. I had conversations with him when i was mayor of istanbul. During my tenure as Prime Minister, we had good relations with the group for the first two terms. The real problem began after 2011, after the referendum for the amendment to the constitution. There was an effort to take away some power. This effort involved the police, Security Forces, and the judiciary. My observation now, in hindsight, is that the efforts were to consolidate this power in the Security Forces and the judiciary. The first step that they took was against the under secretary of the National Intelligence agency about the meetings that were going on in oslo. These were steps taken against the undersecretary to distance the undersecretary of the National Intelligence agency. They were unacceptable to me. The oslo talks were talks expressing some good intentions. National Intelligence Agency of any country can take steps if, in the end, they result in peace. They have taken some steps but there have been lies, slander and because of those lies and slander, we had to intervene. We are where we are, unfortunately. Did you just wake up one day and find out they had infiltrated your government so much so that you called it a parallel government . We were aware that they were trying to infiltrate various organizations but we were not aware of their role to men bad intentions. We realized this after a while and we started taking some measures. When did you know that this was a struggle for power . When they moved against the undersecretary of the National Intelligence agency. That was the first concrete step. There was going to be another process to follow. December 17, december 25, these are the final steps where it became almost a coup. Almost a coup . It was a civilian coup. That is what they were doing. If i had remained silent upon returning from my trip, things would have gone a different way but i was not. When i came back from a trip abroad, there were hundreds of thousands of people at the airport who met me that showed a specific stance. Then hundreds of thousands of people millions of people showed their support and changed things around. The people have really stood firmly with us. We saw this on the 30th of march with 45. 5 of votes. It is my impression that not only were they infiltrating the judiciary and the police but you began to fear that they were wanting to control the intelligence operation of the turkish government. There is an intelligence operation in the Police Forces and then National Intelligence. Thats what i mean. The National Intelligence is part of the police. We do interNational Intelligence through the agency and they were trying to infiltrate those agencies. We have been carrying out a significant cleanup operation. What does that mean . To give you an example, they placed a bug in two of my offices. The moment we realize this, action had been taken. In the same way, wiretapping of phones of people at the highest levels of the government were listening to the conversations in their rooms or keeping the leader of the opposition under surveillance or members of parliament under surveillance going so much forward that they went into the private lives of people. They listened to encrypted phones. Most recently, they listened to meetings at the ministry of foreign affairs. One cannot speak of the patriotism of people who are involved in such action. No group can ask for special privileges for themselves. They came to a point where they were looking for special privileges and we could not have done that. We are therefore taking determined steps to resolve the issue. But i have another expectation. That is the fact that this group is in the u. S. And it is sad for us to see that such a group can exist in the u. S. These elements which threaten National Security of turkey cannot be expected to exist in other countries. What they do here to us they might do against their hosts. No one can guarantee they would not do that. I see them like an organization. In the fighting against the organization, we have expectations from our model partner, the u. S. What do you expect . What would you like for the u. S. To do . They can be delivered. They can be expelled. Its as simple as that. If, for example, someone is a threat to the United States and we get that information, and if we catch them, we deliver those people. We hand them over. I have done such handovers. I would expect the same thing from our strategic partner, the United States. These are the attempts to threaten National Security. They should be handed over if necessary. Do you expect the u. S. To do that, to hand over mr. Gulen . I hope so. Well, at least, they can expel him. This is someone who does not have a passport. He canceled his passport. He left his country on an illegal passport. This person now lives in the u. S. On a green card. You know what your critics say. They say you only began to speak out against gulen when their friends in the judiciary and prosecutorial elements began to press corruption charges against your friend. That is when you turned against them. Only because of the corruption charges they were pursuing did you finally turn on them. This began on december 17. There were things before that. It did not start on the 17th of december. When we look at what was going on, it is already clear now that there is significant corruption. We will be unearthing these issues. When you have a firm position, there is no one that would make that claim against you. They, too, will now say what justice means. They have already started to leave turkey because they know what will happen to them. What will happen to them . Their crimes are numerous. When there are so many crimes, they know they committed those crimes, they are leaving turkey. This is what you said on election night. Those who managed to flee can flee tomorrow. I filed criminal complaints about some of them and they can also flee. We will walk into their den. They will pay for this. How can you threaten our National Security . You are on a campaign to root them out and prosecute them wherever they are. These are people who are part of the judiciary, the police who brought corruption charges. Do you believe because of the wiretaps that they were deliberately trying to do what . To find evidence against you that they could target you with corruption . Mr. Rose, technology is so advanced that you can listen to peoples conversations and then you can play and edit a few sentences. Then you can depict someone else as though he or she is culpable. The same thing is unfortunately happening in our country has happened in our country. The words you read out from my speech are correct. We will continue to follow this up and those who threaten our National Security will be subject to due legal process. What happens to the charges against you if those people are being rooted out of the government . Im very confident in this. When we came to government, turkey had a gdp of 230 billion. Our government brought it up to 820 billion. We went from 230 billion to 820 billion. How could that be corruption . There was divided growth in the 79 years of the republic. In 12 years, we have 17,000 law matters. You cannot do this in a country where there is rampant corruption. We are building for phosphorus. We are building a second tube crossing that will be open in the coming years. How can you do all of this in a country with corruption . We are building fast trains. How could you do all of this in a country with corruption . When i came to government, when we came to government, there were 26 airports. There are 52 airports in turkey now. There is hardly any location in turkey that is not accessible by airplane now. How can a government full of corruption achieve such a development . Right now, debt to gdp ratio is 35 . If you see how the improvements have grown, the borrowing Interest Rate is now Single Digits on our borrowing. In europe, germany has a growth rate of 0. 8 in turkey has a growth rate of 4 . How can you have corruption and achieve all of this . It is clear for all to see. The people appreciated that and they were 45. 5 in favor of this government. Otherwise why would they keep voting us in . I want to stay with this for a second. They also raise the question the same people that were there are prosecuting the military and you seemed to agree with that at the time. Then when they came after you, you look back at what they did in the military and they said maybe it was not good. Have you changed your mind about the legitimacy of the prosecution against the military . Let me tell you one thing. We are always against wrongdoing. When the chief of general staff was arrested, i made some statements then. If you go back and look at those statements, you will see that i have said i did not think it was right for him to be kept in custody and remanded to be prosecuted in this way. I said it was not these courts but he should have been subject to the judgment of higher judicial bodies and the Constitutional Courts, not the court where he was tried. This is what i said at the time and this is what i still say. Of course, if there is evidence to support the wrongdoing, then the judiciary will make the right decision. They are not subject to the prime ministry. Because it is the people that you are rooting out of the government to are doing the prosecuting, are you now saying that maybe we should go back and look at that prosecution to see if it was wrong . Once they turned on you, you begin to look at them, as you said, you fired or reassigned them. I think these are old characterizations, not true. It was not the decision of people involved on the 17th of december and the 25th of december who made the decisions. They were different judges. They are not one and the same. There is also this aspect. This is a privilege we provided to the Constitutional Court when these people exercised that right and made a decision. This led to this process of retrying. They are not acquitted. They will be tried. They will be tried without being detained. This is what the process is about. You have high ratings and you just had a victory at the polls. When you came to power, liberal and conservative elements of society, people of all religious faiths in the turkish Economic Growth rate was up to 67 . 6 and 7 . Some now look at things and say they fear a dissent into authoritarianism. They talk about the rule of law, shutting down twitter. They talk about shutting down protest and the result of loss of life. They worry and express this idea that turkey is becoming too authoritarian. Mr. Rose, do you believe in me . Im repeating what i hear and what i read from people in turkey. Im asking you because you are giving me the opportunity to have a dialogue about it. Let me tell you the following. In a local election, if people vote 45. 5 in favor of a person, and you think him a dictator, you have to really analyze the situation. The dictator that they are talking about is a dictator socalled who can be subject to anything from the media, the leaders of the opposition and the people can clearly and easily insult a person if i were a dictator. How could anyone direct such an insult to me . In our country in this last election, there were Many Political parties which were voted for and they were all part of the ballot box. The elections were completed without any problems. Thats another thing. You talk about twitter. This twitter does not have an office in turkey. Its an American Company and they are evading taxes in turkey. Theyre part of the informal economy, as such. There are Court Decisions, for example. They are provided to them and they include, for example, insults to the Prime Minister or ministers. The courts render decisions but twitter does not suspend those accounts. On the other hand, the Constitutional Court, this regards the legal system acting against contrary to the constitution because article 148 is very clear. It says all of the remedies have to be exhausted before a decision can be rendered. The Constitutional Court does not take that into consideration and acts as a court of first instance and renders a decision. So from a procedural point of view, the Constitutional Court is committing a significant crime, but because there is no other body above the Constitutional Court, what the Constitutional Court says has to be respected. But the law talks about the right to individual petition. If a person, an individual petitions the court, then a decision would be rendered on that decision but this should not be an all encompassing decision. That is very clear in the constitution. This has been disregarded by the Constitutional Court. We talked about all of this during the meetings as well. I say whatever the implementation is in the u. S. , france, the u. K. That should be the case here in turkey, the internet officials came, the twitter officials came, and they were asked why they would not open an office. If they opened an office, they could pay their taxes and they could operate within the legal system and there is nothing that the Party Government would say against them. We are placing smart boards and distributing ipads to students and children. This is the kind of government that we are. If we were a government like this, why would we be against Communications Technology . Is anything happening on twitter or youtube that you would be afraid of . Twitter has to respect everyones freedoms. Second, they need to establish an office in my country. Does twitter pay taxes in the u. S. . Im asking. Do they . Yes. Well, they have to pay taxes in my country, too. They do not pay taxes in my country in the insult in the Court Decisions should all be taken into consideration. They have to be respected. If they do not implement Court Decisions. Then what we do is we shut them down. They open an office, they pay their taxes, and then we tell them the goahead. [laughter] so all this talk about shutting down twitter is only about paying taxes . Only about taxes . Not just paying taxes but also respecting Court Decisions. For example, there is an insult to me, i go to court and the Court Decides that the account should be suspended. The Court Decides that, but they do not do it. They have insults and the court says the account should be shut down and they dont. They did not respect the decisions of the local court. There are also other pornographic things. They are all forbidden. They should not be there. Even though you and the Constitutional Court had a difference of opinion, you do not regret what you did . We do implement the decisions of the Constitutional Court but we also criticize if necessary. It is one thing to implement a decision and another thing to respect that decision. We need to make a distinction there. Do you believe the Constitutional Court is trying to get into politics . If you look at the statement today, they are not talking only about legal issues here. It is also political. We want the judges, the judiciary to talk through their decisions. We do not accept them to do away with the freedom of expressions but the speaker of the parliament was there, the Prime Minister there, the deputy Prime Minister and it was as if he was lecturing and he does not have that right. He should talk about his area with his colleagues. We are talking about separation of powers. The judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branches are in three separate places and they should respect each other. If that respect is not exist, there would be chaos in the country. I was very sad to hear the statement today. I could have chosen not to go there today. But i went there out of respect, and that is why i went there today. But to see or face such a speech there was very sad for my party, for my people. I think the president of the Constitutional Court will always be remembered for the statements and it will always be something he will have to face from now on. Let me talk about the demonstrations and what might happen again with respect to demonstrations. When you look at that and the deaths of seven people, what regrets do you have . What will it be as a guide for you if there are demonstrations in the square again . I will tell you other things when you ask me these questions. You have demonstrations in all countries and people die in those demonstrations. Arent their deaths in the u. S. In demonstrations or in germany . U. K. , madrid, ukraine . It happens everywhere. Unfortunately this is not something we would like to see but it happens. If you resort to violence, then such unwanted consequences occur. Who is it that resorts to violence . Its not the police. Those who resort to violence are, unfortunately, people who are in those squares who believe in the games that the illegal organizations play. When they attacked the police using stones or using other devices, molotov cocktails, the police will react to it. These people, as you have noticed, they did not die as a result of the use of weapons. Our police would not use weapons. Water cannons, for example, or other ways, tear gas. Our police do not use weapons to kill people. We have to be very sensitive to these issues. We never said no to protests. People protest, they can meet but we do not agree on vandalism or fascist pressures. We do not agree with demonstrations which resemble terrorist actions. What we do is we show some areas, places for demonstration and we provide those. They want to demonstrate anywhere they like but this is not possible. It would not be in line with the law. So there would not be the demonstration in the same spot . They can demonstrate. They can demonstrate and have such programs. The place designated, we brought together 2. 5 Million People in istanbul for that meeting and they came together and they left. In that short time, nothing happened, not even a nosebleed. People who want to demonstrate can go to those places, have the demonstrations, but places which are places to walk around for commercial activities should not have to deal with the demonstrations. Then you unfortunately end up having incidents and it leads to people having their nosebleeds. Do you believe it was a foreign conspiracy . There is always foreign provocation with such events. Look at events in egypt. The events here or the events in the ukraine. There are a number of similarities and it is obvious that they are from a Certain Center and we have documents to show this. These are the same events, this scenario, is the same. When we see these scenarios, it gives the impression that the button is pushed in someplace and i believe the intention is to create tension in some places. Do you include the United States in that . Some groups in the u. S. May be part of this, or in the west. In other words, we never claimed that the u. S. Administration was a part of this. There may be people who have provoked this. From the United States . Yes. Let me ask you about syria. You share a border with them. There is no place we can talk about this. We talked about it at the u. N. , but steps that should have been taken have not been taken. Because russia has the veto . Yes. So far, we have more than 700,000 refugees in our country. About 200,000 of them live in tent cities. 500,000 of them live in the cities. We have so far spent 3. 5 billion for them. 50 million came from saudi arabia, 25 million from the u. S. , and others from a number of countries but the total amount so far is 3. 5 billion. We provide food, education. We try to provide assistance to these people and we want the west to be heard as well. We were unable to do this. Nothing came out of the geneva talks. We are together with a number of countries in nato. We have a Model Partnership with the u. S. All of those relationships ought to mean something. There are lots of people who are internally displaced, millions. Theres almost 200,000 people who have died. Doing nothing and just watching is unacceptable. Where is the u. N. , the u. S. , all these countries . What concrete steps would you recommend to change the circumstances . There were steps taken in a number of countries, in libya for example. Some steps in different ways could be taken with respect to syria. Nobody takes into account what happens in libya now. Its what was done and its finished. Whats necessary is to have the firmness and determination to act. Why is this determination not there . There are sanctions, but nothing much is happening here. People die, people leave their country, there is no remedy for them. This is a humanitarian drama. Chemical weapons, yes, but it is the delay tactics. Im not fooled by the chemical weapons issue. 2000 people die as a result of a chemical weapons attack . Thats considered a crime. On the other hand you have almost 200,000 people who have been killed by conventional weapons and thats totally different. If the result of a crime is death, then it is a crime. Im not saying i disagree with chemical weapons. Of course we need to do something against them, but why dont we act against conventional weapons . Barrel bombs, chemical weapons, artillery, they are all used to kill people and they are considered almost nonexistent. Where did these tanks and a barrel bombs come from . Why do we not question . Then there is no value to people. You have a Good Relationship with russia. You respect vladimir putin, yes . We respect and like each other. What do you tell him when he invades crimea . What do you tell him when he puts troops on the border of ukraine . In our conversation about crimea, i told him i did not agree with his actions. He said they were there because the people in crimea wanted to see them there. My reaction to that was that there could be other countries in the world who may look to somebody else to come in but it cannot be justification for the action. We should let those people stand on their own feet. If there is something we can help them with, we should do that so they can stand on their own feet. With respect to ukraine, there will be elections at the end of next month. They have to get necessary support for the elections to go forward. Elections have to be held because the provocation may be made to prevent the elections from taking place and that is something we need to ensure does not happen. I think you and i believe that it would be important to have a positive approach. The people of ukraine and the people of russia are friendly, should be friendly. I think russia should also recognize the process. There is hope that the end result of the election will be good for ukraine. Finally, turkey and the United States. It was certainly said several years ago that you and president obama had a very Good Relationship and would talk often on the phone. Has that relationship changed . I mentioned to you that we spoke a month and a half ago. We do not speak as frequently, perhaps, but we still speak to each other. Our Foreign Ministers and secretaries of state see each other more often. Is there more polarization than you hoped when you very much wanted to be the model for secular, democratic, and islam being part of the whole . I hear stories of turkey becoming more polarized, rich versus poor. What is your sense of that . I would not agree with this. But neither would i say that there is no polarization. As you know, in a society, if the rich exploit the poor, the poor will not respect the rich. They will always view them in a different way but if the rich share their resources with the poor, then that relationship would move in a more positive direction in society. Our society is predominantly muslim. Those who are more religiously observant always try to share their possibilities and their means with the less welltodo. The ethnic structure in the country may sometimes lead to some problems. You may have political kurds using their identity for political means. Turkish nationals use theirs. In my Political Party we have the turks, the kurds, the bosniaks all represented. Mr. Prime minister, thank you so much. Live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to bloomberg west. Im emily chang. Lets get straight to the rundown. The nba takes unprecedented action against clippers owner donald sterling, banning him for life. We will take a look at how this impacts the bottom line. First, a check of your Bloomberg Top headlines. A tax charge crippled ebay earnings in the first quarter. They reported a 2. 3 billion