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ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was acting no differently from Adolf Hitler, comparing the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to that of Jews under the regime Nazi in Germany.
Turkey has criticized from the start the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip launched in retaliation for the attack by Palestinian Hamas in southern Israel on October 7.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that his country would welcome researchers and academics threatened for their opinions on the conflict in Gaza, adding that Western countries supporting Israel were in his eyes complicit in war crimes.
“They were speaking ill of Hitler. What is the difference with Hitler? They will end up making us miss Hitler. Is this Netanyahu doing less than what Hitler did? No,” he said the Turkish president.
“He is richer than Hitler, he has the support of the West. All kinds of support comes from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans,” he added.
Benjamin Netanyahu reacted by judging that the Turkish president, whom he accused of committing genocide against the Kurds and imprisoning journalists, was the last person who could lecture Israel.
Despite this public criticism, Turkey has maintained trade ties with Israel since October 7.
(Written by Tuvan Gumrukcu, French version Bertrand Boucey, edited by Kate Entringer)
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