“May Allah grant me the governorship of Jerusalem,” Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi told an event on Saturday in the central province of Çorum.
His remarks echoed the common sentiment in Türkiye, which stands for Palestinians in the face of Israeli oppression and occupation of Palestinian lands.
Çiftçi, a former governor, was addressing a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) where he hailed how far Türkiye has come under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“We still have a long way to go to achieve Kızıl Elma,” he said, referring to a Turkish mythological concept of achieving an ultimate goal.
“Just as we have seen the liberation of Damascus, Aleppo and Karabakh, Allah willing, we will witness the liberation of Jerusalem,” he said. The said Syrian cities were liberated by revolutionaries who ousted the brutal Assad regime in 2024 while Azerbaijan retook Armenian-occupied Karabakh in 2022.
Türkiye advocates for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and based on the 1967 borders while Israel pushes for more occupation, seeking to annex more Palestinian lands through thriving illegal settlements.
The minister said he prayed to Allah while he was the governor of province of Erzurum (before he took office as interior minister earlier this year) “to govern Jerusalem as a governor even for a day.”
“I believe God will grant this to us. I heartily believe in it. This may be the reality in the future because we have a global leader,” he said, referring to Erdoğan.
Palestine came under Ottoman rule in the 16th century. The rule lasted for more than four centuries, before Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories fell to the British rule. Subsequently, it fell into hands of Israel.
President Erdoğan slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year over a debate on the history of the city. Speaking at a ceremony to reopen a first-century path connecting the Pool of Siloam to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2025 Netanyahu referred to a meeting that allegedly took place in 1998 with then-Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz in which Netanyahu claimed Yılmaz refused to return to Israel a tablet with a Hebrew inscription found near the site because “it would prove that Jerusalem was a Jewish city 2,700 years ago.”
Netanyahu claimed he extended an offer to Yılmaz to replace the Siloam Inscription with “one of the thousands of Ottoman artifacts in our museums,” but was turned down.
Netanyahu said Yılmaz rejected his request out of concern that the electorate led by then-Istanbul Mayor Erdoğan would be outraged by the tablet being given to Israel.
“Jerusalem is our city. Mr. Erdoğan, this is not your city. This is our city. It will always be our city. It will never be divided again,” Netanyahu said.
In response, Erdoğan, one of the most virulent critics of Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, vowed Türkiye “will not allow unauthorized hands to pollute Jerusalem.”
“I know the pain of those Hitler-minded individuals will never fade,” he said. "Let them continue to throw tantrums. We, as Muslims, will not take a single step back from our rights over East Jerusalem,” he added.
“Whether the perpetrator is an organization or the state, terrorism and massacres are a mental deadlock. This bloody lock that holds our region captive will eventually be broken."
