Erdogan compares Netanyahu to Hitler
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel exchanged sharp words on Wednesday after Mr Erdogan compared the Israeli leader to Adolf Hitler while discussing Israel’s war in Gaza.
‘Is what Netanyahu is doing less than Hitler? That is not the case,” Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara, Turkey, at a science awards ceremony. The Turkish leader has repeatedly criticized Israel for its behavior in Gaza.
‘They spoke badly about Hitler. What difference do you have with Hitler? They will make us miss Hitler,” Erdogan said.
Mr. Netanyahu fired back, denouncing Mr. Erdogan’s treatment of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority, saying the Turkish leader is “the last person who can preach morality to us” and condemning his support for Hamas, the group Israel subsequently moved against Gaza is fighting. led attacks on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people in Israel.
The Israeli military, Mr. Netanyahu said, “is fighting to eliminate the most abhorrent and ruthless terrorist organization in the world.”
The Anti-Defamation League, which has defined and monitored anti-Semitism since 1913, condemned Erdogan’s statement.
“Once again, Turkish President Erdogan is using false Nazi analogies to criticize the Israeli government, as he did in 2014, 2018 and 2019, while once again failing to condemn Hamas and the October 7 attack,” the organization said in a social media post. platform
Mr Erdogan has lashed out at Israel earlier in the war, saying Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, a position at odds with that of Western countries.
Mr Netanyahu was not the only Israeli leader to criticize the Turkish president for his comments on Wednesday. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, said Erdogan’s statements were “blatant distortions of reality and a desecration of the memory of the Holocaust.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned Mr Erdogan’s invocation of the Holocaust in his remarks, saying that “the Holocaust stands alone in its horror and enormity, and his words are deeply offensive to every Jew about the all the world, and for the memory of the Jews.” millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis.”
Turkey was once Israel’s best friend in the Muslim world and a major trading partner, but the country cut diplomatic ties with Israel after a deadly 2010 confrontation between Israeli commandos and Turkish activists on a passenger ship trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip .
The countries restored full diplomatic ties in April 2022, after Mr Herzog made a state visit to Turkey, the highest-level meeting of an Israeli leader in the country in 14 years.
Isabel Kershner reporting contributed.