Did Erdogan declare the occupation of Israel?

Last Updated on August 2, 2024 9:27 am

Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced intervention in Israel in support of the Palestinians. He announced this while addressing a party rally on Sunday. While talking about the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, he made clear threats to intervene in Israel.

Erdogan said, “The same way we entered Karabakh, the same way we entered Libya, we can do the same with Israel.” There is nothing we cannot do. We just have to be strong.

At this time, he called for international unity.

Some Israeli media, including Fox News, interpreted Erdogan’s recent comments as a threat to attack Israel.

But did Erdogan really make such a threat? Erdogan’s comments can be interpreted in two ways.

First, he united in outrage at international inaction to stop Israel. Erdogan wants to stop Israel through diplomatic means. At whose hands nearly 40,000 unarmed Palestinians have died so far. Erdogan has been seeking a two-state solution to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine for decades. Basically, he pointed to ensuring the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and permanently bringing the parties to the negotiating table.

Second, Erdoğan’s announcement can be interpreted as a mere phrase meaning intervention to anger Israel. Erdogan apparently wants to highlight Turkey’s determination to stand by the Palestinians in the face of unrelenting Western support for Israel’s war crimes, and to rally the international community around Turkey to stand up against Netanyahu’s genocidal regime. In fact, Erdogan said in the same speech that Turkey must be strong so that Israel does not dare to repeat what it has already done in Palestine. It should be remembered that Erdogan is the only leader in the region who publicly criticized Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians in his famous ‘one minute’ confrontation with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009.

Fox News tried to present Turkey as an occupying state through their reporting. But Türkiye was never the ‘occupier’. Under Erdogan, it was a tireless advocate of diplomacy. It improved relations with countries once on the brink of war, such as Greece, and even reached out to Egypt and Syria to normalize relations. In terms of military deployments, it does so only in self-defense, such as military operations against the PKK terrorist group in Syria and Iraq, which pose an immediate threat to Turkey’s security.

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