Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’: Erdogan

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday vowed that Israel would pay a price for the “genocide” in Gaza as he marked the first anniversary of the war in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.

“It should not be forgotten that Israel will sooner or later pay the price for this genocide that it has been carrying out for a year and is still continuing,” he said on X.

A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause, including Hamas, Erdogan has often attacked Israel, branding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and comparing him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network will be stopped in the same way,” Erdogan said.

“A world in which no account is held for the Gaza genocide will never find peace.”

The Turkish leader, who often lauded Hamas as freedom fighters, said what has been massacred before the eyes of the entire world for exactly one year “is actually all of humanity, and all of humanity’s hopes for the future”.

Erdogan also criticised the international system’s failure to stop the conflict in Gaza and now in Lebanon and said: “Israel’s long-standing policy of genocide, occupation and invasion must now come to an end.”