Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rhetorical campaign against Israel this week provoked a condemnation from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but Turkish officials are indifferent to the rebuke.
“The United States strongly condemns President Erdogan’s recent antisemitic comments regarding the Jewish people and finds them reprehensible,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday evening. “We urge President Erdogan and other Turkish leaders to refrain from incendiary remarks, which could incite further violence.”
Erdogan has leaped to condemn Israeli operations in response to Palestinian rocket attacks this week, as the surge in violence presents him with a political opportunity at home and abroad. That rhetorical barrage turned into a dispute with Washington when Erdogan accused the Israelis of delighting in the deaths of children and the elderly.
“They only are satisfied by sucking their blood,” Erdogan said Monday after a Cabinet meeting, referring to Israeli officials then Palestinians.
TURKEY: ERDOGAN WANTS TO DEPLOY ANTI-ISRAEL ‘INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION FORCE’ TO GAZA
The fighting erupted earlier this month in the context of an Israeli attempt to evict several Palestinian families from a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Hamas and other militants then took the controversy as an occasion to launch unprecedented rocket barrages against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in what they describe as a new strategy against Israel.
“For the first time, we have an uprising in Jerusalem, among Palestinians who are living in 1948 areas, in the West Bank, and rockets are being launched from Gaza,” Hamas spokesman Khaled al Qaddumi, who is based in Iran, told Al-Monitor.
Israeli officials, for their part, are attempting to destroy as much of Hamas’s rocket arsenal as they can before this round of fighting ends.
“You can either conquer them — and that’s always an open possibility — or you can deter them,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. “We are engaged right now in forceful deterrence, but I have to say, we are not ruling out anything.”
Erdogan also attacked President Joe Biden by name, saying he is “writing history with your bloody hands,” but it was the blood-sucking barb that drew U.S. officials into the war of words.
“Antisemitic language has no place anywhere,” Price said. “We take seriously the violence that often accompanies antisemitism and the dangerous lies that undergird it. We must always counter lies with facts and answer crimes of hate with justice.”
Turkish officials brushed off Price’s rebuke. “It is a tragicomic approach by the U.S. to associate our president’s support to the oppressed Palestinian people and his reflecting of Israel’s illegal and inhumane acts with antisemitism,” Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalın said Wednesday. “Israel’s massacres cannot be covered up with the label of antisemitism.”
Erdogan’s comments have put an inflammatory edge to the diplomatic pressure building around the conflict. The Turkish president is testing whether the crisis could justify a change in the oversight of Jerusalem’s holy sites, which are under the custodianship of Jordan, the Arab monarchy to Israel’s east. Erdogan, who has invoked the late Ottoman Empire to argue that “Jerusalem is our city,” has implied that Turkey could provide peacekeeping forces to counter the Israeli military.
“As Turkey grows stronger, advances towards becoming a regional and global leader, we will continue to offer more opportunities to our youth,” Erdogan said Wednesday in a speech to mark Turkey’s national day. “I believe our youth will endeavor in accordance with the responsibility placed upon their shoulders by the fact that all the oppressed across the world pin their hopes and trust on Turkey.”
Biden’s administration tried to strike a balance between affirming Israel’s right to self-defense and pressuring Netanyahu to curtail Israeli operations, but Biden put additional pressure on Netanyahu Wednesday morning.
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“The two leaders had a detailed discussion on the state of events in Gaza, Israel’s progress in degrading the capabilities of Hamas and other terrorist elements, and ongoing diplomatic efforts by regional governments and the United States,” the White House press office said in a summary of their phone call. “The President conveyed to the Prime Minister that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire.”
