Erdogan’s threats come amid a dramatic flare up in the nine-month cross-border war between the IDF and Hezbollah.
(photo credit: REUTERS/VIOLETA SANTOS MOURA)
Jerusalem and Ankara traded sharp barbs on Sunday, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeming to threaten military action against Israel on Sundays as tensions heated up between the Jewish state and the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah.
Israel in turn warned that his fate could become akin to that of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was executed by hanging.
“Erdogan is following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein by threatening to attack Israel. He should remember what happened there and how it ended,’ Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which he linked a photograph of the two men.
He spoke up after Erdogan suggested that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.
Erdogan, who has been a fierce critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas, started discussing that war during a speech praising his country’s defense industry.
“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them,” Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party in his hometown of Rize.
“There is no reason why we cannot do this… We must be strong so that we can take these steps,” Erdogan added in the televised address.
AK Party representatives did not respond to calls asking for more details on Erdogan’s comments. Israel did not immediately make any comment.
The president appeared to be referring to past actions by Turkey.
In 2020, Turkey sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord of Libya.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who heads the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, is backed by Turkey.
Turkey has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh but said last year it was using “all means,” including military training and modernization, to support its close ally.
Turkey responds to Middle East crisis
Erdogan’s threats come amid a dramatic flare-up in the nine-month cross-border war between the IDF and Hezbollah. A Hezbollah-launched Iranian rocket landed in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Saturday, killing 12 children.
The Turkey leader spoke as the international commuting is scrambling to avert a larger Israeli-Lebanese war and or a regional one.
Turkey, however, is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as such, it is unlikely that it could intervene militarily in the IDF-Hezbollah conflict.
Relations between Israel and Turkey which had been on the mend before the Gaza war, have frayed, with Ankara stopping all trade with Israel in May.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post