Erdoğan Vows to Teach Turkish Children Muslim Discovery of Americas

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has instructed Turkey’s educational institutions to adopt a policy of highlighting the contribution of Islam to global science and arts, including the discovery of the American continent by Muslim sailors some 300 years before Columbus.

“I have to be clear that there is an important responsibility falling on the shoulders of our Education Ministry and YÖK [the Higher Education Board]. An objective writing of history will show the contribution of the East, the Middle East and Islam to the science and arts. As the president of my country, I cannot accept that our civilization is inferior to other civilizations,” Erdoğan said in his address to students at the opening of a religious school in Ankara on Nov. 18.

Harvard Zoologist Quoted to Prove Erdoğan’s Columbus Claim

Staunchly pro-government media outlets in Turkey are racing with each other to prove that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was right in his recent claim that the Americas were discovered by Muslim sailors long before Christopher Columbus.

“Studies of American historians show that Islam reached the Americas in the 650s,” daily Akşam reported on Nov. 17. One of the “historians” that the article referred to, however, raised some eyebrows on Turkish social media.

So Muslims Beat Columbus to America? They Had Better Get in Line

Alan Yuhas

 

In 1492 Christopher Columbus got lost, followed some birds and wound up on some islands he’d never been to before. He came up with a plot to enslave some of the people he met there, went home and staked a claim that would be contested by Vikings and Bristolians and the Turkish president: he called dibs on America.

The idea that any group discovered a supercontinent inhabited by thousands of native people for well over 10,000 years has long been pilloried, but that did not deter the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On Sunday, he said that Muslims probably discovered the Americas before Columbus.

Muslims Discovered America Before Columbus, Claims Turkey’s Erdogan

Ishaan Tharoor

 

In a televised speech in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that Muslims had discovered the Americas three centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus. He was addressing a summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," Erdogan said. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast."

Erdogan is not shy of making provocative statements, whether it's about his political rivals, ethnic minorities or social media Web sites. His latest remarks are, in comparison, less incendiary.