Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters yesterday on board the presidential plane on his way back from a summit of Turkic states in Kazakhstan that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is no longer someone we can talk to”. “We have crossed him out,” said the Turkish president, who reiterated that Turkey is working to take Israel to the International Criminal Court for war crimes. “I said at the demonstration for Palestine that we would support initiatives to bring Israel’s human rights violations and war crimes to the ICC,” he said.
The Turkish president claimed that Netanyahu has lost the support of the majority of Israeli citizens, and that he wants to gain support for the massacres in Gaza by resorting to religious rhetoric. “Do not the Ten Commandments command ‘Thou shalt not kill’?” questioned Erdoğan, who accused the Israeli politician of resorting to “populism” to gain support, while “the Israeli government “systematically usurps the homes of Palestinians” and “does not guarantee them the right to live.” “The invaders they call ‘settlers‘ have been placed in Palestinian homes… They want to justify the war crimes committed by the Israeli army with religious rhetoric,” he continued. “What he (Netanyahu) needs to do is take a step back and stop this,” he added.
Referring to relations between Israel and Turkey – which on Saturday announced it is recalling its ambassador to Tel Aviv over attacks on civilians in Gaza – Erdoğan stressed however that his government is not considering a complete severance of relations with the Hebrew state: “Cutting ties completely is not possible, especially in international diplomacy,” said the Turkish president, who also detailed the efforts being made by Turkey to end the war, in which the head of the Turkish secret services, İbrahim Kalın (former spokesman and advisor to Erdoğan himself), is involved personally negotiating with Israelis and Palestinians, including also Hamas.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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