President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apparently irked Austria rather than Germany when he compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. The Austrian Foreign Ministry came out and "rejected" Erdoğan's comparison with "the darkest chapter of our history." Erdoğan has called on the world to stop Netanyahu from continuing massacres of Palestinians just as the international community did to stop Hitler 70 years ago.
The Turkish Presidency's Communications Directorate head Fahrettin Altun responded to Austria's criticism and said "message received," in a social media post on Tuesday. Altun said Erdoğan's statement was not just an analogy but rather "an effort to help those who support this genocide to look themselves in the mirror."
"It is clear from this reaction that the message has been received by the enablers and partners in crime! Only those who feel guilty and ashamed of their history would be disturbed by these remarks. And it is only those who aid and support the Israeli state’s war crimes because of their historical guilt that would feel exposed," Altun stated.
"It’s a tragedy that those with a dark history of racism and ethnic cleansing are repeating the same mistake by supporting genocide in Palestine," he added.
Erdoğan often invokes the name of Hitler in his criticism of the Netanyahu administration, likening the plight of Palestinians in today's conflict to the plight of Jews in Hitler's Germany in World War II. Austria is among the major supporters of Israel in Europe, along with Germany, something its critics tied to the guilt it felt over the Holocaust. As it braces for a possible victory by a far-right movement in Sunday's parliamentary election, the birthplace of Hitler still clings to steadfast support to Tel Aviv in the face of the conflict. It was most blatant in a U.N. session last October, shortly after the new round of the Palestine-Israel conflict began when it joined countries rejecting a call for a cease-fire.
