President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday condemned Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, saying no one with a conscience can accept or remain silent in the face of Tel Aviv's genocide.
“The massacre in Gaza continues with full force. No one who listens to their conscience can accept what is happening, let alone remain silent in the face of such genocide,” Erdoğan said during a United Nations Summit on Palestinians at U.N. headquarters during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Underscoring the growing global resonance of the issue, he added: “The truth is that today the Palestinian cause has become a cause for the entire world.”
Erdoğan also praised countries that have formally recognized Palestine. “I congratulate the countries that have decided to recognize the State of Palestine. I hope this step and similar initiatives will accelerate the realization of a two-state solution,” he said.
He said the goal of Israel’s deepening occupation and annexation policies is “to kill the vision of a two-state solution and to exile the Palestinian people,” stressing that such attempts “must never be allowed.”
He added that the immediate priorities are the declaration of a cease-fire, the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Communications Directorate issued a statement of clarification after the president's speech was cut off. The directorate noted that Erdoğan’s address at the U.N. General Assembly was limited to five minutes in line with procedural rules, stressing that suggestions he was interrupted or cut off were unfounded.
The statement said Erdoğan’s remarks occasionally drew applause, causing him to exceed the allotted time, and his microphone automatically switched off at the five-minute mark due to technical regulations. He then concluded his speech shortly afterward. The presidency noted that the same rule also applied to Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s address.
A virulent critic of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and expansionist policies, Erdoğan calls on world nations to stand up for Palestine, echoing his foresight from a similar U.N. meeting five years ago that condemned the world body’s continued ineffectiveness against Israel.
In what has been called “leadership foresight,” Erdoğan in his 2019 address to the U.N. General Assembly, had warned that Israel was looking to “take what’s left of Palestine” and lambasted the world body’s ineffectiveness in realizing decisions taken against Israel over its violations in Palestine.
Holding a map of changing Palestinian territories since 1947, Erdoğan argued how Palestine shrank as Israel expanded throughout the decades, coming to a point where “Palestine all but doesn’t exist and it’s all just Israel.”
“Israel will not be satiated,” he told the assembly. “There are all the U.N. resolutions taken about Israel, but they are not implemented. So, what good is the United Nations? If we are not effective with the decisions we take under this roof, where will justice concentrate? That’s where our problem lies.”
Israel launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza after Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, killing over 65,000 Palestinians while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
Türkiye has also sounded the alarm that Israel will move on to its next target in the region once it crushes the Palestinian opposition to its expansionist policies.
