Turkey’s Erdogan criticizes US crackdown on anti-Israel campus rioters

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wades into the debate over US college campus protests on Thursday, saying authorities were displaying “cruelty” in clamping down on pro-Palestinian rioters

Demonstrations have spread on campuses across the US over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, prompting police crackdowns and arrests at some venues such as Columbia University in New York.

“Conscientious students and academics including anti-Zionist Jews at some prestigious American universities are protesting the massacre [in Gaza],” Erdogan tells an event in Ankara.

“These people are being subjected to violence, cruelty, suffering, and even torture for saying the massacre has to stop,” he said, adding that university staff were being “sacked and lynched” for supporting the Palestinians.

“The limits of Western democracy are drawn by Israel’s interests,” Erdogan says. “Whatever infringes on Israel’s interests is anti-democratic, antisemitic for them.”

Separately today, Erdogan held talks with the leader of Turkey’s main opposition CHP party on Thursday, the first such meeting in nearly eight years, just one month after the CHP outperformed Erdogan’s party in local elections.

The March 31 vote marked Erdogan and his AK Party’s (AKP) worst defeat in more than 20 years in power. It revitalized the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) under new chief Ozgur Ozel, and strengthened Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s standing as a strong future presidential contender.