Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that he canceled a planned visit to the occupied territories as a result of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza, calling the Palestinian resistance group Hamas “liberators, not terrorists.”
Speaking at the Justice and Development (AK) Party’s parliamentary group meeting in Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan said that before October 7, when the conflict erupted, he had planned to visit the occupied territories but then canceled his plans.
“Relations could have been different but that will no longer happen, unfortunately,” Erdogan said, blasting the Israeli regime for taking advantage of Turkey’s “good intentions.”
Erdogan condemned Israel’s brutal actions and said almost half of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza are children, adding that “you will not find any other state whose army behaves with such inhumanity.”
Turkish President added that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. “It is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” he said, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith.
Erdogan also slammed Western powers for supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire, the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and for Muslim countries to work together to stop the violence.
He accused the West of hypocrisy for failing to respond to what he called Israel’s “intentional massacre” in Gaza with the same decisiveness as it did to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
“The perpetrators of the massacre and the destruction taking place in Gaza are those providing unlimited support for Israel,” Erdogan said.
“Israel’s attacks on Gaza, for both itself and those supporting them, amount to murder and mental illness,” he added.
“It is clear that security cannot be ensured by bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches,” Erdogan said in a statement last week after Israeli bombardment of a hospital in Gaza, which sparked protests in Turkey and around the world.
In late May 2010, diplomatic relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv significantly deteriorated when Israeli commandoes boarded, deploying from helicopters, in the humanitarian Mavi-Marmara flotilla, and killed ten Turkish citizens.
While the two states restored ties in 2016, Turkey again dismissed Israeli envoys in 2018 over Israel’s deadly crackdown on peaceful Palestinian protesters at Gaza’s fence with Israel.
Israel launched the devastating war against Palestinians on October 7 after the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance groups staged Operation al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise attack on the occupied territories, in response to the Israeli regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has killed over 7,165 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 18,000 others in its relentless airstrikes, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
It has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal territory into a humanitarian crisis.
