Turkish officials on Sunday railed at Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu for remarks criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the Turkish leader compared him to Nazis for the war crimes Israel is committing against Palestinians.
“Israel is a state currently on trial for charges of genocide before the International Court of Justice. No party other than the Israeli government is responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Members of the Israeli government who aim to construct a false narrative cannot veil these facts,” Türkiye's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Öncü Keçeli said Sunday.
"The conscience of humanity and international law will undoubtedly ensure that Israeli officials are held accountable," Keçeli argued after Netanyahu dismissed Erdoğan remarks a day earlier.
“No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization,” Erdoğan told a rally in Istanbul. “Türkiye is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them and Israel is a terror state enforcing a policy of genocide on 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.”
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.
Israel has responded with a relentless ground and air offensive that the Health Ministry in Gaza said has killed at least 30,878 people in the besieged Palestinian enclave, mostly women and children.
Erdoğan has called Israel a "terrorist state" and accused it of conducting a "genocide" in Gaza.
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.
Ömer Çelik, the spokesperson for Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), declared Netanyahu’s response to Erdoğan’s accusations as “null and void.”
“The global conscience is condemning Netanyahu for threatening regional and world place,” he said. “We will continue expressing the crimes Israel is committing against humanity on every possible platform.”
Turkish Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, too, put Netanyahu on blast over his remarks, saying he was “at it again, lashing out at our country to cover up his crimes.”
“There is no amount of lying, disinformation, and deception that can conceal the historic massacres he’s committed against innocent civilians,” Altun wrote on X. “History has already judged him as the most disastrous leader for this region as well as for his own country.”
“No matter how much support Netanyahu’s murderous war cabinet receives from the global powers, he will go down in history as an utterly failed leader who has dashed hopes for peace and stability in this region,” he said. “There is no amount of politicking and maneuvering he can do to change that fact.”
He said Türkiye will continue standing firmly for “truth, justice and decolonization in Palestine” and in “full solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters.”
