President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan highlighted the importance of unity among Muslim countries in order to stop Israel's attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and implement the U.N. Security Council's cease-fire decision, as he spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) on Monday, the Presidential Communications Directorate said.
Erdoğan told bin Salman that more effective joint efforts are needed to implement the UNSC decision.
Last month, the UNSC voted in favor of a resolution urging an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
The two leaders also discussed Türkiye-Saudi Arabia bilateral relations and regional and global developments the directorate said.
Erdoğan has been one of the most virulent critics of Israel since the start of the war on Gaza, which began after Israel harshly retaliated to an Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian group Hamas in Israel that claimed at least 1,160 lives, according to Israel. He has expressed full support for Hamas and rejected the Western stance of classifying it as a terrorist organization.
Erdoğan has called Israel a "terrorist state" and accused it of conducting a "genocide" in Gaza.
He and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu also traded barbs after the Turkish leader compared him to Nazis for the war crimes Israel is committing against Palestinians.
Netanyahu responded that he would "not be lectured" by Erdoğan, whom he accused of "using pressure in his own country against Kurds and critics."
Israeli officials have used alarmingly plain genocidal rhetoric regarding Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, with Netanyahu himself saying early on during the conflict via X that Israel's current war on Gaza was a "struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle," a language similar to Nazis' justification of the Holocaust.
