US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee‘s controversial comments supporting the Israeli state’s ‘religious’ right to take over the entire Middle East and kill Palestinian children, made during an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, have received a harsh response in Turkey, where Erdoğan’s AKP party spokesman Ömer Çelik called his words “horrible and inhumane”.
Fourteen countries and three regional organisations have in recent hours jointly and strongly condemned the controversial remarks by the US diplomat, who said that “it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab states, including the occupied West Bank“. The US embassy in Israel reacted to the controversy by claiming that Huckabee’s remarks had been “taken out of context“, The New York Times reported.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates expressed their “strong condemnation and profound concern” over the comments, which they described as “dangerous and inflammatory” and “a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and the Charter of the United Nations”, as well as a “grave threat to security and stability in the Middle East”.
Huckabee, appointed US ambassador to Israel in April 2025 shortly after Trump took office, is an evangelical Christian who has previously advocated expansionist positions based on what he calls Israel’s “divine right” over the West Bank. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, he argued that Israel has a “biblical right” to the lands between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, and when asked explicitly whether this meant that Israel had the right to dominate all of these countries, he replied: “It would be fine if they (Israel) took it all“.
Turkey: “Where do Israel’s borders end?”
In a message posted on Monday on his social media profile, AKP spokesman Ömer Çelik stressed that Israel has no right or sovereignty over the Arab and Palestinian lands it occupies, calling any threat against “our Arab brothers” as “illegitimate” and asserting that attempts to annex the West Bank or separate it from the Gaza Strip constitute “spatial genocide“, while stressing that the expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is a clear act of aggression.
Çelik added that the US ambassador to Israel’s endorsement of the Israeli state’s killing of children in Gaza represents “an inhumane and appalling mentality”. “Advocating the killing of children is murder and genocide. Occupying the homes and lands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is part of a genocidal policy. These are attacks on all human values,” he insisted.
The AKP party spokesman warned that “attempts to replace international law with fanatical theological approaches will have serious consequences throughout the region” and stressed that Türkiye firmly rejects and condemns any position that threatens “brotherly states” in the region by promoting Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
“Resisting this barbarism is the first thing to do humanly and politically. We will continue to defend a sovereign and unified Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the 1967 borders, and to fight against the genocidal enemies of humanity… The question that everyone should ask today, in the name of peace, law, justice and humanity, is the same question that our President (Erdoğan) has repeatedly asked from the UN rostrum: Where do Israel’s borders end?“, Çelik concluded.
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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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