Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed all his eloquence yesterday in his denunciation of the Israeli bombings of Gaza. If in 2014 he accused Israel of practicing “state terrorism,” on this occasion he specified: “We have never approved the atrocities committed by Israel and its style of acting as an organization instead of a State, and we never will.” .
“The entire West considers Hamas a terrorist organization. From here I say it: Israel, you can be it; The West owes you many debts. But Türkiye has no debts to you. Hamas is not a terrorist organization; “It is a group of liberation fighters, fighting to protect their land and their citizens,” Erdogan said in Parliament.
“Almost half of the dead (...) are children. “This alone represents an atrocity whose purpose is to directly commit crimes against humanity,” Erdogan said. “Israel's attacks on Gaza are a situation that testifies to both murder and a state of mental illness, both for those who carry them out and for those who support them,” he said, and called for “pressuring the Netanyahu government so that the State of Israel has common sense.”
“We have no problem with the State of Israel,” he noted anyway. In principle it is true, but only recently. Turkey and Israel reestablished diplomatic relations in 2022 despite Israel's ties with Greece and Cyprus. Relations have previously been difficult, particularly in the wake of the Israeli boarding of the flotilla attempting to break the blockade of Gaza in 2010, resulting in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens. Israel has always viewed Turkey with suspicion for its support, at least moral, for Hamas, while, on the other hand, Turkey's rivalry with Iran was a factor in its favor.
Erdogan spoke about his first and only meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu in New York in September during the UN General Assembly, and said he now planned to visit Israel. “I shook his hand only once,” he said. He had good intentions. If they continued with good intentions, we would have better relations, but unfortunately they abused our good will. "We had the project of going to Israel and we have canceled it."
The Turkish head of state called for an “immediate ceasefire”, as well as the urgent opening of a “humanitarian corridor” for the wounded in Gaza. Also the sending of humanitarian aid, since the number of trucks that have crossed the Rafah crossing represents "a drop in the desert that means nothing." Türkiye has so far sent eight planes to Egypt with humanitarian aid for Gaza. While proposing an international conference and an alliance of Turkey with other Islamic countries (its Foreign Minister met yesterday, by the way, with his Qatari counterpart in Doha), he stated, cryptically, that “we are willing to be one of the guarantors for the Palestinian side with our human, political and military presence.”
Erdogan's denunciation of the Western attitude had a parallel echo yesterday in new statements by Queen Rania of Jordan. The most universal Palestinian said in an interview on CNN that “in recent weeks we have seen a blatant double standard in the world.” “When October 7 happened, the world immediately and unequivocally supported Israel and its right to defend itself and condemned the attack that occurred... But what we are seeing in recent weeks is silence in the world.”
For now, the only regional alliance is not the one Erdogan would prefer, but rather the one formed by the Lebanese Hizbullah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with Iran in the background. Portraits of the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and Ayatollah Khomeini presided over a meeting – reported yesterday – between two leaders of the Palestinian factions and the head of Hizbullah, Hasan Nasrallah. The official statement was limited to saying that “an evaluation was made of the international positions that are being adopted and what the parties of the Axis of Resistance [against Israel] must do... to achieve a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine and stop the brutal aggression.”
