Turkey’s foreign ministry on Thursday accused Israel of committing genocide, being the “foremost threat to the security” of the region, and “feeding on conflict.”
Whereas Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has often used such inflammatory language, his foreign ministry had largely refrained from it before Thursday’s unusual statement in English.
The statement follows an escalation in the rhetoric between the Israeli and Turkish foreign ministers in connection with Jerusalem’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its strikes in Syria to prevent Islamists from obtaining military capabilities that endanger Israelis and others.
“Israeli Ministers cannot conceal the genocide committed in Gaza, the total war against the Palestinian people, settler terrorism, the intention to annex the West Bank and the expansionist ambitions behind Israel’s attacks on Syria and Lebanon by targeting” Turkey, the ministry in Ankara wrote, condemning what it called “Israel’s foreign policy approach that feeds on conflict.”
Israel, the Turkish Foreign Ministry added, has become the foremost threat to the security of our region through its attacks on the territorial integrity and national unity of regional countries. As a strategic destabilizer in the region, Israel causes turmoil and fuels terrorism, it continued.
The statement followed Israeli strikes in Syria, where Erdoğan’s government helped install in power Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda terrorist who is also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Israel has vowed to prevent weapons from the regime of Bashar Assad, which al-Julani’s troops toppled in December, reaching the Sunni Islamists led by al-Julani.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry this week also escalated its tone, in statements that referenced mass protests against Erdoğan in Turkey over internal issues.
“While violently suppressing his own citizens and carrying out mass arrests of political opponents, Erdoğan presumes to preach lofty values to the international community. In Erdoğan’s Turkey, there is no justice, no law, and no freedom. Israel does not need Erdoğan’s ridiculous moral sermons. Israel acts to defend itself and its citizens against real threats and actual attacks—and it will continue to do so,” the ministry in Jerusalem posted on X this past Saturday night.
On Sunday, Erdoğan said in an Id al-Fitr holiday sermon: “May Allah, for the sake of his name ‘Al-Qahhar,’ destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.” Earlier this month, he said Israel “feeds on the blood, lives and tears of the innocent,” fuels antisemitism and “distorts reality.”
On May 29, 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.”