Turkish PM: Israeli ‘provocations’ radicalizing Muslim world

ANKARA — A day after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed crimes against humanity comparable to those behind the Paris attacks that left 17 dead, the Turkish leader said Friday that Israeli “provocations” were radicalizing the Muslim world.

“(Netanyahu) himself killed, his army killed children in the playground. They killed our citizens and an American citizen in international waters. This is terrorism. Nobody can argue about Israeli aggression in Jerusalem in the al-Aqsa mosque,” Davutoglu told Reuters Friday, in reference to the deadly Israeli assault on a Turkish vessel trying to break the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. Israeli naval commandos opened fire, killing nine Turkish nationals, when they were attacked with clubs and poles on the deck of the Mavi Marmara in the 2010 incident.

“These provocations create frustration in the Muslim world and are becoming one of the reasons why these radical trends are emerging,” he said.

“If we want to establish peace and order in the Middle East, eliminating all the extremist forces, we have to solve the Palestinian question,” he continued.

On Thursday, the Turkish PM said Netanyahu “committed crimes against humanity the same like those terrorists who carried out the Paris massacre,” he told reporters in televised comments.

“Just as the massacre in Paris committed by terrorists is a crime against humanity, Netanyahu, as the head of the government that kills children playing on the beach with the bombardment of Gaza, destroys thousands of homes … and that massacred our citizens on an aid ship in international waters, has committed crimes against humanity,” Davutoglu said.

The remarks came as part of the latest round in a series of snipes between Israeli and Turkish officials.

Netanyahu, as well as Davutoglu, joined other world leaders at Sunday’s Paris march in memory of 17 people killed in Islamist terror attacks last week, among them six Jews, four of whom were targeted at a kosher supermarket in the city.

At a news conference in Ankara on Monday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he could “hardly understand how he (Netanyahu) dared to go” to the massive march in the French capital.

The Turkish president urged Netanyahu to “give an account for the children, women you massacred” and accused him of leading “state terrorism” against the Palestinians.

On Wednesday night Netanyahu responded by calling on the international community to reject the comments for being morally unsound.

“I believe his shameful remarks must be repudiated by the international community, because the war against terror will only succeed if it’s guided by moral clarity,” Netanyahu’s office quoted him as telling visiting leaders of the US pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. “I’ve yet to hear any world leader condemn the comments by Erdogan, not one.”

Earlier Wednesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called Erdogan an “anti-Semitic neighborhood bully” and accused Europe of contributing to increasing anti-Semitism on the continent by ignoring Erdogan’s recent anti-Israel statements.

“It’s bad enough that leaders in Europe fail to condemn blatant human rights violations in Turkey itself, he said, “but their ignoring of the hatred and the incitement against Israel that this man cultivates is something that we cannot ignore.”

“If one looks for the reasons for increasing anti-Semitism in Europe — why and how it happens — this is one of the reasons. The silence of the lambs of cultured Europe — the Europe of political correctness — in the face of an anti-Semitic neighborhood bully like Erdogan and his friends brings us back to the situation of the 1930s.”