Prince Harry has been branded a “European white boy” who had no right to decide whether Afghan people lived or died.
Harry is facing new condemnation for telling how he kept count of the 25 Taliban fighters who he killed as an Apache helicopter pilot in the Afghan conflict.
The prince described the killings in his autobiography ‘Spare’ as like removing pieces from a chess board.
But Harry’s comments have infuriated the speaker of the Turkish Parliament, 54-year-old Mustafa Sentop.
Harry reportedly said: “If you see them as human beings, you cannot kill them.”
The former MP Sentop, during a meeting of NGOs in Edirne, said: “European white boy, who are you to decide whether the other person is human or not?
“What were you doing in Afghanistan? What were you doing there to kill people?”
Sentop also reportedly explained: “The 20th century has been the bloodiest century in human history.”
He added: “Europeans are the ones who kill the most people in the world.”
Sentop continued:: “They fought the 1st and 2nd World Wars.
“They killed over 20 million people in World War I. According to the rhetoric regarding World War II, they killed around 75 million people.
“There are also those who say that there were more than 100 million [dead].
“The world is disturbed by the perspectives that marginalise people who are not white Europeans, who use all the possibilities of the world to exploit other primitive people, who only think about themselves when they speak of justice and prosperity in the world.”
Sentop had earlier famously condemned the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, calling it “disgraceful” and a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
Others have also criticised Prince Harry, with retired army veteran Colonel Tim Collins saying in an interview with Forces News: “Amongst his assertions is a claim that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan.
“That’s not how you behave in the army; it’s not how we think. He has badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”
Collins also said that Harry was conducting “a tragic moneymaking scam to fund the lifestyle he can’t afford.”
A former British military commander in Afghanistan, retired Colonel Richard Kemp, said the prince’s comments may put his security at risk, with extremists who support the Taliban now potentially “motivated to kill Harry”.
Taliban leader Anas Haqqani said on Twitter in English: “Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return. Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes.” (sic)
He added: “Our innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders. Still, you were defeated in that ‘game’ of white & black ‘square’.” (sic)
