Erdogan slams Israel; hopes Turkey to soon open 'embassy to Palestine in Jerusalem'
04:04PM Mon 18 Dec, 2017
Turkish President says 'days are near' when Turkey will be able to open diplomatic mission in Jerusalem.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed hope on Sunday that Turkey would soon be able to open an embassy to a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, as he again denounced Donald Trump's recognition of the city as the Israeli capital.
Erdogan has sought to lead Islamic condemnation of his US counterpart’s move, calling a summit of the leaders of Muslim nations last week in Istanbul who urged the world to recognise East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after it seized control of the area in the 1967 war, in a move never recognised by the international community.
"Because it is under occupation we can't just go there and open an embassy," Erdogan said in a speech to his ruling party in the city of Karaman.
"But, inshallah (God willing) those days are near and... we will officially open our embassy there," he said, without giving any precise timescale.
Turkey currently has a general consulate in Jerusalem. Ankara has full diplomatic ties with Israel, and like all other nations, its embassy is in Tel Aviv.
Erdogan again slammed his US counterpart's decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move the US embassy in Israel to the city, saying it smacked of a "Zionist and evangelist logic and understanding."
He said Jews had no right to "appropriate" Jerusalem which was the the "capital of Muslims".
"Please stop where you are and don't attempt any Zionist operation," he said. "If you try, then the price is going to be high."
Erdogan had already slammed Trump's recognition of Jerusalem in previous fiercely anti-Israeli comments.
Posturing as a defender of the Palestinian cause, Erdogan referred to Israel as a “terror state,” as a “child-murdering country”, in the aftermath of the Trump speech. He also threatened to undo diplomatic ties.
The once thriving Israel-Turkey relations have deteriorated sharply since Erdogan is in power. The 2006 Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israeli Security Forces killed Turkish activists after being attacked upon taking on a ship carrying aid to Gaza, led to a freeze in diplomatic relations for ten years.
In 2009, during Israel’s “Cast Lead” operation on Gaza, President Erdogan famously hushed the moderator of a panel at a forum in Davos to go on to an aggressive verbal attack against Israeli President Shimon Peres. “When it comes to killing”, he told Peres, “you know very well how to kill”.
“One minute”, the expression Erdogan used to get some extra time to intervene from the moderator, who was closing down the debate, became famous in Turkey. Erdogan was greeted at the airport by crowds of supporters waving Turkish and Palestinian flags.
Earlier this year, Erdogan accused Israel of “attempting to take over the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem” after Netanyahu installed metal detectors at the entrance of the “Temple Mount”, or “Haram al-Sharif”, following an attack.
The metal detector crisis marked a hype in anti-semitic discourse in Turkey, with local newspapers referring to Israeli authorities as simply “Jews” in several occasions.
The highly respectable Hrant Dink Foundation, which is named after a murdered Armenian journalist, publishes detailed periodical reports on hate speech in Turkish media.
In the report which covered the months of May to August, including July when the Temple Mount crisis erupted, Jews were topping the ladder with 493 hate speech incidents reported, more than Syrians, Greeks and Armenians.
Source: i24News
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