The American Jewish Committee on Tuesday said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s accusation that Israel “feeds on the blood, lives and tears of the innocent” fuels antisemitism and “distorts reality.”
Erdoğan made the statement on Monday at a Ramadan dinner after Israel struck Hamas targets in Gaza following a 58-day ceasefire.
“Erdoğan’s ongoing advocacy for Hamas and his relentless demonization of Israel should be met with unequivocal condemnation,” The AJC statement added.
Diliman Abdulkader, a prominent activist for Kurdish rights, also condemned Erdoğan’s remarks.
“The terrorist state of Turkey literally just slaughtered an entire Kurdish family of nine, which included seven children. Turkey houses, arms and sponsors terrorism. Islamist Turkey must be booted from NATO,” wrote Abdulkader.
He was referencing reports that a Turkish drone strike had killed nine civilians from the same family in a village south of Kobani in Syria on Sunday night.
Erdoğan has a record of using what his critics decry as blood libels against Israel and Jews.
In June, Erdoğan said in a speech to members of his AK Party that, “The world is watching the barbarity of ... a psychopath, a vampire who feeds on blood called Netanyahu, and they are watching it on live broadcast.”
In November 2023, he reiterated at least two libels that he had previously used against Israel. On Nov. 12, 2023, he said that “Israel is now a baby-killer country.” Later that week, he told his party conference, “I say with a clear conscience that Israel is a terrorist state.”
Erdoğan was reacting to Israel’s attacks on Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, in which its terrorists and other Gazans murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251.
The Turkish leader inveighed against Israel also in 2021, during a previous round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas that the terrorist group initiated.
He made a rambling speech in Ankara following a cabinet meeting in which he used “Jews” and “Israelis” interchangeably.
“They are murderers, to the point that they kill children who are five or six years old. They are murderers, to the point they drag women on the ground to their death and they are murderers, to the point they kill old people ... They only are satisfied by sucking their blood,” he said.
The U.S. State Department spokesperson at the time, Ned Price, said “the United States strongly condemns President Erdoğan’s recent antisemitic comments regarding the Jewish people and finds them reprehensible.”
