Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza and rebuild the area, calling it unworthy of discussion and driven by pressure from the “Zionist lobby.”
Gaza, Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem rightfully belong to the Palestinians, he said.
“I would like to state this clearly once: The proposals put forward by the new American administration regarding Gaza with the pressure of the Zionist lobby have nothing worth considering or discussing from our perspective,” Erdoğan told reporters at Istanbul Airport before boarding a flight to Malaysia for an official visit.
“These are purely preoccupations with nonsense. No one has the power to remove the people of Gaza from their eternal homeland that has been around for thousands of years,” he continued.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also rejected the plan earlier on Sunday, calling it historically ignorant.
“The displacement of Palestinians is unacceptable,” said Fidan.
Erdogan sharply criticized Israel again on Monday, holding the Jewish state responsible for the extensive destruction in Gaza and demanding $100 billion in compensation.
He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of causing the damage and insisted that the State of Israel fund Gaza’s reconstruction instead of seeking to relocate Palestinians.
Ankara has been among Jerusalem’s fiercest critics during the war, cutting trade ties and drawing comparisons between Israel’s actions and those of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Erdoğan even hinted at military action against the Jewish state.
Turkey joins other Arab and Muslim-majority countries in rejecting Trump’s proposal, made during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last week, that would see the United States take control of Gaza, resettle its Palestinian population elsewhere and transform the enclave.
On Sunday, Trump said that “Hamas has been a disaster,” blaming the terrorist group for making Gaza one of the “most dangerous places in the world.”
Despite their statements to the contrary, Arab nations would be open to resettling Gazans elsewhere once they were negotiating directly with him, Trump said during a press gaggle on Air Force One as he headed to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl.
“They never spoke to me. They spoke to other people. When they speak to me, they’re going to take them,” he claimed.
