Turkish Parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmuş met with the grandson of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first Black president and pioneer of the anti-apartheid movement, in Ankara on Friday, in a display of solidarity with Palestine.
Kurtulmuş hosted Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, a member of the South African parliament, and Jeff Monson, a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) competitor, along with representatives from the European Muslim Forum and the Global Palestine Summit, he said on X.
"I would like to sincerely thank our two esteemed brothers for their courageous stance on the side of justice and humanity against the oppression of Israel," Kurtulmuş added.
Monson, who recently converted to Islam, reportedly cited solidarity with Palestinians as one of the motivations for his change in faith.
Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, and statesman who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), sending some of its top lawyers to The Hague for a legal showdown, where it is seeking to compel Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza, which killed at least 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long been a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause, often linking it to its own struggle against the white-minority government, which had cooperative relations with Israel.
Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela famously said South Africa's freedom would be "incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
