- Joined
- Mar 11, 2013
- Messages
- 15,161
- Points
- 113
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that Jerusalem belongs solely to Israel, vowing that Turkey will never abandon the Palestinians’ claim to East Jerusalem, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Netanyahu made his remarks on September 15 at a ceremony in Jerusalem’s City of David, an archaeological park built over the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan just outside the Old City walls.
The event marked the unveiling of the “Pilgrimage Road,” a newly excavated underground passage that Israel says was once used by Jewish worshippers on their way to the ancient Temple Mount more than 2,000 years ago.
The ceremony was attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
In his speech Netanyahu talked about a personal grievance dating back to the 1990s, when Israel unsuccessfully sought the return of the Siloam Inscription, an ancient Hebrew text unearthed in Jerusalem in the late 19th century and kept in İstanbul since the Ottoman era.
Netanyahu recounted that Turkey’s then-prime minister, Mesut Yılmaz, refused to return the inscription in 1998 partly because of political sensitivities involving İstanbul’s mayor at the time, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Netanyahu then pointedly addressed Erdoğan, saying: “This is our city, Mr. Erdoğan. It’s not your city. It’s our city. It will always be our city. It will not be divided again.”
Israeli media outlets claimed the words were a direct rebuttal to Erdoğan’s 2020 claim in Turkey’s parliament that “Jerusalem is our city, a city from us,” referencing the centuries of Ottoman rule over the city before World War I.
Erdoğan responded on Wednesday in a speech at a groundbreaking ceremony for Turkey’s new foreign ministry complex in Ankara.
“No one can stop us from standing with Gaza’s oppressed, who struggle to survive under Israel’s brutal attacks,” he said.
Erdoğan accused Israel of pursuing a genocidal campaign in Gaza, saying, “Those who think they can build a secure future through tyranny and genocide, at the cost of innocent children’s lives, will lose and drown in the blood they have shed.”
The Turkish president vowed to protect Jerusalem’s sanctity, saying, “We will not allow the Al-Quds al-Sharif [Jerusalem] to be defiled by unworthy hands.”
Referring to Netanyahu, Erdoğan added: “I know the resentment of these Hitler imitators will perhaps never fade. Let them continue their fits of rage. We, as Muslims, will not take a single step back from our rights over East Jerusalem.”
Erdoğan has time and again compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, while Netanyahu has accused Erdoğan of hypocrisy and antisemitism.
His ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Ömer Çelik dismissed Netanyahu’s remarks as “null and void” and described them as the words of the “leader of a genocide network.”
Turkey and Israel were close military and diplomatic partners in the 1990s, but ties deteriorated after Israel’s 2008–2009 war in Gaza and collapsed after the 2010 Mavi Marmara raid, when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a ship trying to break the Gaza blockade.
Relations thawed in 2022 when Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Ankara, but Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that began in October 2023 has reignited hostile rhetoric.
The campaign has devastated the Gaza Strip, reportedly killing more than 65,000 and displacing nearly the entire population of more than 2 million people.
The United Nations warns of famine, with aid agencies reporting severe shortages of food, medicine, and water.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocide, while the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza, citing patterns of mass civilian killings, destruction of infrastructure and statements by Israeli officials indicating genocidal intent.
The dispute over Jerusalem’s sovereignty is far from symbolic since it is one of the core issues that has derailed peace negotiations for decades.
For Palestinians the City of David project itself is a flashpoint.
The park is run by Elad, a nationalist settler organization that has been accused of displacing Palestinian families in Silwan and of using archaeology to justify Jewish exclusivity in East Jerusalem.
The United Nations considers East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed, to be occupied territory.
Most governments do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty there, and Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
The United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital under President Donald Trump in 2017 and moved its embassy there, breaking with international consensus.
The move was welcomed by Israel but condemned by Palestinians and much of the world.
