“Even though barbarians disguised as civilized people forget it, we will never forget the children on the other side of the Euphrates,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday. In a speech he made at the Presidential Complex after hearing a chorus performance on “Those We Forgot on the Other Side of the Euphrates,” during an event on the launch of the new academic year in Türkiye.
Erdoğan’s speech came one day before the third anniversary of the onset of Israel’s genocide targeting Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. The president has been a staunch opponent of the genocide and a critic of the West’s inaction in the face of Israel’s unbridled aggression. “We will never forget the children on the other side of the Euphrates, we will always stand with them, we will always defend their righteous cause,” he said.
The president said that he was emotional after hearing the song dedicated to the children of Gaza deprived of their right to life and education. “On this occasion, I send my message of solidarity on behalf of my country and nation to all Gazan students who were forced to bury their mothers, fathers, siblings and friends in the past three years, students whose houses, universities, schools were demolished by a Zionist network of genocide perpetrators, who, despite all this, have not made concessions on their bid to live a dignified life, to all oppressed people across the world,” Erdoğan stated.
“May Allah bless the souls of our 74,000 mothers, mostly children and women who have been victims of Israel’s state terrorism in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said.
Wednesday is the third anniversary of the start of a new round of the Palestine-Israel conflict after Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. It triggered the most violent Israeli response to the Palestinians’ fight for their rights and to retake the occupied territories. Israel’s indiscriminate attacks across the Palestinian enclave occasionally came to a halt, though casualties exceeded 70,000 in three years. A cease-fire brokered by the United States has been in place since last year but Israel repeatedly violated it, killing at least 1,400 Palestinians.
Erdoğan used his address to the United Nations General Assembly last month to press the international community for stronger action over Israel's genocidal conduct in Gaza and renewed recognition of Palestinian statehood.
