Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan compared Israel to Nazi Germany on Tuesday, even comparing Jews in Europe during World War II to the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“The immediate establishment of an independent Palestinian state with homogeneous territories, on the basis of the 1967 borders with east[ern] Jerusalem as its capital, is the only solution,” said Erdoğan during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly, reported Ynet news.
The Turkish leader, known for his anti-Israel rhetoric in the past, held up maps of Israel since 1947 and pointed out that the Palestinian territories were “shrinking.”
“Where are the borders of the State of Israel?” he asked.
“When we look at the genocide Nazis committed against Jews, we should look at the massacre happening in the Gaza Strip from the same point of view,” Erdoğan was quoted in Israeli media reports as saying before his speech to a group of Turkish expats living in New York, citing the Turkish Anadolu news agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the speech, saying, “He who does not stop lying about Israel, who slaughters the Kurds in his country, and who denies the awful massacre of the Armenian people should not preach to Israel.”
The Turkish president also said that nuclear power should either be free for all states or banned for everyone.
