Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of being a terrorist state that is planning to push the war in Gaza into the wider Middle East.
His comments ahead of a session of the U.N. General Assembly follows a ramping up of regional tensions, with Israel’s military saying on Monday it had conducted “extensive” air strikes on 300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel that preceded the Gaza war, Erdogan has been at odds with other NATO members, blocking co-operation with Israel, a major non-member ally of the alliance.
Erdogan has also called Hamas a “liberation group” and told a meeting of his ruling AK Party in July that Turkey may enter Israel to help Palestinians in the war in the same way it has previously done during conflicts such as in Libya.
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“I have been saying all along that Israel targets not only the Gaza Strip,” Erdogan told reporters Monday. “The recent attacks on Lebanon have confirmed our suspicion that Israel’s plan is to spread the war to the entire region.”
The Turkish leader said that “we see that Israel is carrying out attacks not as a state but as a terrorist organization. This is state terrorism,” referring to the targeting of walkie-talkies and pagers used by Hezbollah last week, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement with.
“With this attack Israel clearly demonstrated that it does not care about civilians and will try to achieve its [goals] any cost,” Erdogan said, adding that pressure on Israel “must be intensified further to prevent the region from being dragged into an even greater disaster.”
He said he would address the U.N. General Assembly to called for “action against genocide in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s aggressive policies.”
Newsweek has contacted the Israeli foreign ministry for comment.
Istanbul-based geopolitical analyst, Yörük Işık, who runs the Bosphorus Observer consultancy, said that Erdogan’s rhetoric is mostly for domestic consumption.
“In practical terms, there is no role Ankara can play in the Palestinian conflict due to the misguided decisions and taking sides by Ankara recently,” he told Newsweek.
He said that when Erdogan speaks at the U.N. he might highlight the civilian casualties “because it’s easy to overlook, but the commentary and the language used are past any kind of diplomatic understanding.”
Işık said that Turkey’s traditional role as a backer of the Palestinian cause has morphed into support for Hamas despite the role the militants played on October 7, which preceded the Gaza war.
“Turkey fell into this trap,” he said. “At the end it all got lined up with Hamas and Ankara totally lost any kind of communication method with Israel.”
The killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, blamed on Israel, has also had an impact on relations because he was “Turkey’s man” in the Gaza talks, said Işık.
However, trade between Israel and Turkey is continuing through proxies, free trade zones and secondary ports.
“Despite its mighty words, Turkey is normalizing its relations to the Middle East, and you’ll see this rhetoric suddenly changing one of these days in the upcoming months,” Işık said.
Civilians were urged on Monday to vacate areas Hezbollah is using in Lebanon amid a spike in hostilities which that air strikes on Beirut on Friday that reportedly killed two Hezbollah commanders and 35 other people.
Hezbollah launched a rocket attack into Israel after the October 7 Hamas attacks and hostilities between both sides have spiralled, with the Iranian-backed group saying it is acting out of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll since the start of the Gaza conflict is over 41,000 according to local health authorities cited by the Associated Press.
Palestinian news sources said that Israel has been “carpet bombing” parts of Lebanon, causing many casualties, with videos on social media purporting to show large explosions and chaotic scenes.
