The Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) will pause its summer recess for a special guest: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is set to address a special session of the parliament on Thursday amid Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians.
The Palestinian leader is expected to travel to Türkiye after a visit to Russia this week. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who criticized Abbas for delaying his expected address, will be in the audience listening to Abbas. Palestinians injured in Israel’s attacks in Gaza and evacuated to Türkiye for treatment are also invited to the parliament for the session.
Parliamentary Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş, who formally extended an invitation to Abbas earlier, will chair the session where the Palestinian leader will appear. His speech is deemed important and experts say it can be a response to a notorious speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month at U.S. Congress, where he received a lengthy standing ovation while justifying his government’s war crimes against Palestinians.
Media outlets reported that high-security measures would be in place at the parliament for the occasion. Abbas rarely travels outside Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is located, though the flareup of the Palestine-Israel conflict spurred renewed diplomacy to resolve longstanding issues, as well as maintaining ultimate unity between rival Fatah and Hamas factions. 88-year-old Abbas has reportedly postponed his visit to Türkiye due to health reasons. He last visited Türkiye for a three-day visit in March and met President Erdoğan. Erdoğan also brought together Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, the political bureau chief of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, who was assassinated in Tehran recently, as a step toward reconciliation between Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas, which faces a brutal crackdown in Gaza.
Abbas is expected to deliver a speech focusing on Israel’s attacks in Gaza while it is unclear whether he will delve into other topics, such as reconciliation with Hamas, especially after a landmark meeting mediated by China between factions. His speech will be preceded by an opening address by Kurtulmuş.
The parliament invited representatives of political parties, ambassadors and journalists to the session. It will also hold an exhibition on the sidelines of the session that will focus on Haniyeh, including photos of the late leader’s visits to Türkiye, as well as documents from Ottoman archives about Palestine and parliament’s past joint declarations about Palestine.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which holds a majority in the Parliament, is a major supporter of the Palestinian cause and often calls for a two-state solution to the conflict based on a free State of Palestine. The Turkish opposition also endorses Palestine against Israel, though the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), equally blames Hamas for the conflict, a rhetoric copied from the Western countries supporting Israel.
Ankara has been fiercely critical of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which it says amounts to genocide, and has halted all bilateral trade. It has also slammed many Western allies for their support of Israel and repeatedly called for Muslim unity to facilitate a desperately needed cease-fire.
Last week, Erdoğan on Monday called attention to mounting problems and pressure in the international system, especially amid Israel's ongoing attacks on Gaza. "World politics is navigating one of its sharpest turns. There is a serious power vacuum in the international system and we are facing a loss of morality and conscience," Erdoğan said in a speech in Ankara."With the Gaza crisis, the global system has become bankrupt," said Erdoğan. "Words are no longer enough to describe the genocide that the Palestinian people are subjected to in Gaza," he added.
Erdoğan said unbearable images of the "genocide" have been emerging daily from Gaza, which has been under Israeli attack for nearly 10 months, claiming the lives of almost 40,000 "innocent" people, including more than 16,000 children. "Israel does not only kill Gazans with bombs and bullets. It also kills them by leaving them hungry, thirsty and without food," he added. "A rogue state, which has become increasingly cruel, spoiled and depraved, has displayed all manners of barbarism for 300 days against 2.3 million people, squeezed into a palm-sized piece of land," Erdoğan said.
He added that in the face of oppression in Gaza, "which should normally awaken humanity, the U.N. Security Council remains silent."
Likening Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, Erdoğan said those who "applaud" his lies will "never be able to wash off dark stains on their hands for the rest of their lives." The perpetrators of genocide "should not be at podiums of legislative chambers" but in courtrooms where they will account for their crimes, he added.
