Israeli security forces are “attacking the Palestinians with methods similar to the Nazis,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleged in his latest effort to stoke regional hostility against the Jewish state.
“There is no difference between the atrocity faced by the Jewish people in Europe 75 years ago and the brutality that our Gaza brothers are subjected to,” Erdogan said Friday, per i24 News. “I will say openly and clearly that what Israel is doing is banditry, brutality and state terror.”
Israel has been criticized over the last several days for killing dozens of Palestinians at a protest against the dedication of the U.S. Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. Most of the slain were members of Hamas, according to the terrorist group, attempting to breach the security fence between Gaza and Israel. But Turkish officials worry that President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the nation’s capital will lead other countries to do the same.
“In the final declaration, we will emphasize the status of the Palestine issue for our community, and that we will not allow changing the status of the historic city,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. “We must prevent other countries from following the U.S. example.”
The conference featured another high-profile display of concord between Turkey, a key member of NATO, and Iran — at a time when the U.S., European, and Israeli officials are consulting about how to counter the Islamic Republic’s aggression in Syria.
“Israel’s recent crimes in Palestine and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem need serious coordination between Islamic countries and the international community,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
Iran provides support to Hamas, a terrorist group that gained political power in the 2006 Palestinian elections. “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people,” Hamas official Salah Bardawil told a Palestinian media outlet. “How can Hamas reap the fruits if it pays such an expensive price?”
Erdogan’s marked anti-Israel rhetoric is consistent with a larger turn away from U.S. allies and interests, in part due to disagreements over the western strategy in Syria and his authoritarian lurch since a failed coup in 2015. “For a ‘friend,’ they are very problematic,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told the Washington Examiner.
By contrast, leading Arab nations have been fairly muted in their criticism of Israel, focusing instead on the common threat posed by Iran. Erdogan’s voluble difference could be explained by something simpler than a strategic drift away from the United States, however.
“He is a raging anti-Semite,” Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operations officer and senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “That’s not unusual in his milieu, but it is unusual to have him occupy the president’s office in Turkey and to have that affliction as egregiously as he’s got it.”
