Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday (27) that there is no difference between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler, due to the “cruelty” of Israeli attacks on Gaza since the beginning of the war with Hamas.
“They usually speak ill of Hitler. But what's the difference with Hitler? They're going to make us miss Hitler. Is what Netanyahu is doing less than what Hitler did?”, asked the Turkish leader during a public speech.
The Turkish leader stated that Israel's response to the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 “annihilated all the values of humanity.”
“We saw Israel's Nazi camps in stadiums, didn't we?” declared Erdogan, referring to videos released this week on social media that show Israeli soldiers gathering hundreds of Palestinians in their underwear in a stadium in Gaza.
“I point out a difference: Hitler was not that rich; these (referring to the Israeli leaders) are richer than Hitler. They are supported by the West, the United States gives them all kinds of support. And so they killed about 20 thousand inhabitants of Gaza”, added the Turkish president.
In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Erdogan “is the last person who can teach morality” to Israelis. “Erdogan, who commits genocide against the Kurds, who holds the world record for arresting journalists who oppose his government, is the last person who can teach us morality lessons,” the Israeli prime minister responded in a statement.
Netanyahu also defended the Israeli forces as having the most moral values in the world in their fight against “the most abominable and cruel terrorist organization in the world, Hamas-ISIS, which has committed crimes against humanity and which Erdogan praises and receives their superior officers.”
Turkey is a historic ally of Israel and although relations have deteriorated since Erdogan came to power in 2002, with two periods of rupture in the last decade, the two countries re-established full diplomatic relations last year, with presidential and close cooperation plans.
Following the Hamas attack on October 7, Erdogan denounced the Israeli response of massive bombing of Gaza as a “war crime”, and Israel recalled its ambassador in late October.
Erdogan has always insisted on protecting the Jewish community residing in Turkey and often recalls that Turkey opened its doors to many Jews persecuted in Nazi Germany, just as the Ottoman Empire welcomed the Sephardim expelled from Spain in the 15th century.
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