Turkey submits bid to join South Africa genocide case against Israel
Ankara joins handful of countries seeking to participate in the case at The Hague; if accepted, it will be able to make written submissions, speak at public hearings
Turkey on Wednesday filed a request with a UN court to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, the foreign minister said.
Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accompanied by a group of Turkish legislators, submitted a declaration of intervention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
In seeking to participate in the case, Turkey, which has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel throughout its war against Hamas in Gaza, joined Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and the Palestinians. The applications have yet to be granted, but if they are, the countries would be able to make written submissions and speak at public hearings.
“We have just submitted our application to the International Court of Justice to intervene in the genocide case filed against Israel,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wrote on the social media platform X. “Emboldened by the impunity for its crimes, Israel is killing more and more innocent Palestinians every day.”
“The international community must do its part to stop the genocide; it must put the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters,” he said. “Turkey will make every effort to do so.”
South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year, alleging that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the accusations of genocide as baseless and says South Africa is acting as an emissary of the Hamas terror group, which rules Gaza and seeks to eliminate the Jewish state. It says that the Israel Defense Forces is targeting Hamas combatants, not Palestinian civilians, but points out that civilian casualties in the fighting are unavoidable as terrorists operate from deep within the population.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticized Western nations for backing Israel.
He has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In contrast, he often expressed support for Hamas, lauding the terror group as defenders of their homeland, and met with slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul, after which he encouraged Palestinians to unite against Israel.
Ankara announced its intention to join South Africa’s case against Israel back in May once the necessary legal preparations were complete.
Preliminary hearings have already been held in the ICJ case against Israel, but the court is expected to take years to reach a final decision.
In the interim, the court has issued four rulings against Israel since January 26, the most recent of which was an order in May for Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The ambiguous order was approved by 13 votes to two but its exact interpretation was disputed among the judges. Some read it as a blanket order to entirely halt the offensive in the southernmost Gaza city, while others suggested that it was a limited order instructing Israel not to violate the Genocide Convention while carrying out its military campaign.
“No country in the world is above international law,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X earlier Wednesday. “The case at the International Court of Justice is extremely important in terms of ensuring that the crimes committed by Israel do not go unpunished.”
Keceli called for the immediate implementation of new precautionary measures ordered by the court, including a halt to the IDF’s military offensive against Hamas and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered, mostly civilians, and 251 were taken as hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 331.
