Turkey recently inaugurated a mosque in the Gaza Strip in the name of Salafi theologian Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said on Sunday.
“What a ‘gesture’ from Turkey: Funding a mosque in Gaza named after Abdullah Azzam—the man who mentored Osama bin Laden and co-founded Al-Qaeda,” the Israeli minister wrote in a post on X.
Azzam, an Islamic scholar from Silat al-Harithiya, a village near Jenin in Samaria, is widely considered the “father of the global jihad,” having been bin Laden’s mentor before being assassinated by a car bomb detonated by unidentified assailants in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989.
He also laid the groundwork for the establishment of Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008, killing 166 people and wounding 300. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who ran the Nariman House Chabad center in the city, were among those murdered.
Chikli in his X post said that under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has become “a dangerous Trojan horse, actively advancing Al-Qaeda-linked networks in Gaza, Syria and Mogadishu, Somalia.
“The West’s continuing blindness to Erdoğan’s game is extremely dangerous,” wrote Chikli, warning, “Wake up before it’s too late.”
The Abdullah Azzam Mosque in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood was among three houses of worship that opened with Ankara’s support ahead of Ramadan, which begins this week.
According to Turkish state-run news channel TRT, Diyanet—Ankara’s official religious body operating under Erdoğan’s office—also funded Al-Huda Mosque in Jabalia and the al-Isra Mosque in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan district.
Diyanet—formally the Directorate of Religious Affairs—is funded by the state budget and is responsible for overseeing the mosques, appointing imams and issuing religious guidance in line with Turkish state policy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office last month criticized U.S. President Donald Trump after he extended an invitation to Turkey to become a founding member of his Board of Peace, which is to oversee the ceasefire agreement with Hamas in the Strip.
The Prime Minister’s Office stressed in a statement that the move had not been coordinated with Jerusalem and ran “contrary to its policy.”
Announcing the Board of Peace on Jan. 15, Trump credited Turkey, Qatar and Egypt for helping negotiate a “comprehensive” agreement on “the surrender of all weapons, and the dismantling of every tunnel.”
Jerusalem views the growing regional role of Turkey and Qatar as a threat, while Trump is said to hold Ankara and Doha in high regard. Both nations have hosted Hamas leaders and funded their operations.
Netanyahu previously ruled out Turkey’s participation in the peace deal, defining it as the Jewish state’s “red line” for Gaza. According to Israel Hayom, the prime minister’s mention of “new threats” in an Oct. 20 Knesset speech referred to the influence of Turkey and Qatar.
