Israel ‘recklessly making plans to add new massacres to their list’: Turkish president

WASHINGTON 

Israel is committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip and making plans to “add new massacres to their list,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. 

During a meeting with International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan in New York, Erdogan said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “did not hesitate to violate international law and human rights.”

The closed-door meeting at the Turkish House came on the sidelines of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly.

Erdogan told Khan that Israel and Netanyahu administration “were recklessly making plans to add new massacres to their list, believing that there was no power to stop them,” according to Türkiye’s Communications Directorate.

President Erdogan also said that “Israel must be held accountable for the crimes it has committed and that it is extremely important for the genocide case filed against Israel at the International Criminal Court to be concluded and for the perpetrators of genocide to receive the punishment they deserve in order to maintain trust in international law”. 

Türkiye “will continue to exert all efforts for the detection of the crime of genocide with concrete evidence,” said the Communications Directorate. 

Türkiye and Erdogan have fiercely advocated holding Netanyahu administration accountable in international courts of law for its nearly year-long relentless offensive in the Gaza Strip, killing or injuring over 130,000 Palestinians.

Khan in May requested that the court issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Khan has requested twice, most recently in August, for the court to expedite the issuance of the warrants.

Since last Oct. 7, over the course of nearly a year, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 41,400 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 95,500, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel also faces accusations of genocide for its actions in Gaza at the UN’s International Court of Justice, a body separate from The Hague-based ICC, which is independent.

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