Shortly before his trip to Germany, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again sharply verbally attacked Israel and accused the country of a strategy of extermination against people in the city of Gaza. “Israel is pursuing a strategy of total destruction of a city and its people by deliberately targeting schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, markets, buildings and streets,” Erdogan told members of his Islamic conservative ruling party AKP in Ankara.
With “limitless support from America and Western countries,” the government of Israel has been carrying out “non-stop massacres” for 40 days, Erdogan said. He repeatedly accused Israel of “state terror.”
Erdogan is expected to visit Berlin on Friday. He recently questioned Israel’s legitimacy. Israel is trying to “build a state whose history goes back only 75 years and whose legitimacy is questioned by its own fascism,” he said on Friday. Erdogan also describes the Islamist Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Israel, the USA and the EU, as a “liberation organization”.
Netanyahu accuses Erdogan of supporting terrorism
Israel accuses Erdogan of supporting terrorism. “He calls Israel a terrorist state, but actually supports the terrorist state of Hamas,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting with US evangelist Franklin Graham, international president of Samaritan’s Purse. Erdogan also “bombed Turkish villages in Turkey itself.”
What exactly Netanyahu was referring to was initially unclear. Turkey repeatedly takes military action in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq against the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK. In northern Iraq, where the PKK has its headquarters, the military repeatedly carries out air strikes.
