Devlet Bahçeli, the head of Türkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and an ally of the government, has called on the United Nations to deploy peacekeepers to the Gaza Strip against Israel’s ongoing massacres.
In a strongly worded statement, Bahçeli condemned Israel’s military campaign as a “barbaric blockade” that has left Gaza’s population facing hunger, thirst, shortages of medicine and “all kinds of despicable oppression.”
He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pursuing a “genocidal” plan to occupy and annex Gaza, calling it “a despicable ambition that should shock the world.”
“It is now a matter of life and death for the U.N. to take immediate action, or at least show signs of vitality and to deal a blow to the ongoing massacre and the Zionist project in Gaza with a peacekeeping force,” Bahçeli said.
The MHP leader urged the international community to act “on political, military and moral grounds” to prevent further civilian deaths, warning that any delay would have “disastrous consequences.”
He also called on Muslim countries to respond to what he described as the “groaning voices of the victims and oppressed” and to fulfill their “Islamic and humanitarian responsibilities.”
Bahçeli voiced support for Hamas, describing it as waging “an honorable struggle” to defend its homeland “with legitimate and justified reasons,” and said such resistance should receive backing from sympathetic states and organizations.
He dismissed as “unacceptable” any discussion of Israeli conditions for ending the war, framing them as terms of “annihilation.”
He also rejected what he characterized as the world’s passivity in the face of the humanitarian catastrophe, where “the buried ones are not only lifeless bodies but also humanity and human heritage.”
Bahçeli said Türkiye’s protests against Israel’s actions were “just, honorable, legal and extremely accurate,” and framed Ankara as a moral actor with the historical heritage and strategic vision to play a leading role in securing justice for the Palestinian people.
“The ambition to swallow Gaza must be thwarted,” he said, adding that a U.N. peacekeeping mission was both a “human duty” and an urgent necessity.
