Politics Erdogan causes a scandal with verbal attack against Israel
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has triggered a new diplomatic crisis with Israel with a fierce verbal attack. "May my God (...) bring destruction and misery to Zionist Israel," Erdogan said in a speech after prayers at the start of Eid on Sunday.
31.03.2025, 19:55
SDA
Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the statements and wrote on Platform X: "Dictator Erdogan has shown his anti-Semitic face." Erdogan is a danger to the region and his own people.
This was followed shortly afterwards by a sharp retort from Ankara. The Turkish Foreign Ministry called Saar's statements "outrageous". Turkish Communications Director Fahrettin Altun rejected the accusation of anti-Semitism and interpreted Erdogan's statements as "courageous resistance against Zionist harassment and defamation".
Relations between Israel and Turkey are at an all-time low. Erdogan had condemned the murder of many hundreds of Israeli civilians in the terrorist attack on 7 October 2023, but later described Hamas, which was responsible for the attack, as a "liberation organization". In contrast, he has described Israel as a "terrorist state" in the past, compared Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and accused the country of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians. Officially, he advocates a two-state solution within the 1967 borders.
