Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan strongly condemned on Wednesday the assassination in Iran in an Israeli attack of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, with whom he met last April in Istanbul, while denouncing that with his death Israel wants to undermine the resistance of Gaza and the Palestinians.
According to international media reports, 62-year-old Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend a ceremony for Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had sworn in yesterday. The Israeli government press office initially posted on social media a picture of Haniyeh – who was playing a key role in peace negotiations with Israel to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza – next to the word ‘eliminated’, although the post was later deleted.
The ceremony in Tehran was also attended on behalf of Turkey by its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who shortly afterwards posted a picture of himself meeting Haniyeh on his X profile, dedicating these words to him: ‘He dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause and to bringing peace to Palestine. Even when his family members were massacred by Israel, he never lost his faith in peace. His memory will live on in the just cause of the Palestinian people. May he rest in peace.’
‘This assassination seeks to undermine the noble resistance of Gaza and the righteous struggle of the Palestinians,’ the Turkish president said in a statement on social media after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard website confirmed that Haniyeh “was attacked in Tehran and, as a result, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred (killed)”.
In line with its usual policy, the Israeli government has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in Haniyeh’s assassination, but many countries have already warned that his death will have serious consequences for peace efforts in the region; among them Russia, which denounced what happened as an ‘unacceptable political assassination that will lead to a further escalation of tensions’, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said.
Ankara maintains relations with the Islamist group Hamas, which unlike most Western countries and Israel does not consider a terrorist organisation but a ‘Palestinian resistance group’. In his statement, published on the social network X, Erdoğan added that despite Haniyeh’s assassination, ‘Turkey will continue trying all ways, pushing all doors and supporting the Palestinians, by all our means. We will continue to work for the establishment of a free, sovereign and independent state of Palestine, based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital’.
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Edited and reviewed by:
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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