GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Turkish President Recep Erdogan has described Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as “genocide” and not a conflict, accusing the Western powers of being accomplices in the war crimes happening in Gaza.
“The Gaza crisis is a testament to the collapse of the current global order,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.
According to the Anadolu news agency, Erdogan said that “the current century has been turning into an era of crises as the rules-based international order has lost meaning, becoming no more than a slogan.”
“The current international system, devoid of fundamental concepts such as solidarity, justice, and trust, cannot fulfill even its minimum responsibilities,” Erdogan added in his speech at the event, which was held on Turkiye’s southern Mediterranean coast.
Erdogan accused the Western countries of supporting Tel Aviv unconditionally and being “complicit in the bloodshed through their hypocritical policies.”
“What is happening in Gaza is not a conflict, it is a genocide, because even wars have their own rules,” he said, adding: “I am talking about treacherous, dishonorable targeting and barbarity that lacks any sense of honor.”
Erdogan talked about the brutal killing of civilians, including women and children, in Gaza, stressing that belief in global justice, law and order had also been tarnished.
He called for necessarily establishing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with territorial integrity and on the 1967 borders.
“The global community can only repay its debt to the Palestinian people through the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he said.
He expressed his concern over Israel’s practices in Gaza, pointing to its mass killing of civilians waiting for aid last Thursday.
“As a result of Israel’s deliberate attacks against civilian gatherings, 30,000 Gazans, mostly children and women, have been martyred so far. More than 70,000 Palestinians have been injured and approximately 2,000,000 people have been forced to leave their homes,” he said.
Erdogan also sharply criticized international bodies over what he called their impotence and failure to act against Israel.
“We have seen how weak and dysfunctional international institutions are, such as the UN Security Council, whose duty is to ensure global peace, the European Union and others,” he said.
