The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, affirmed this Wednesday that there is no difference between the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Adolf Hitler, and assured that the "cruelty" of Israel's attacks in Gaza makes him even "miss" to the Nazi dictator.
"They speak badly of Hitler. But, between you and Hitler, what difference is there? This makes us miss Hitler. Is what Netanyahu does less than what Hitler did?" asked the Turkish president during a public intervention.
The Islamist leader assured that Israel's response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 "have annihilated all the values of humanity."
"We've seen Israel's Nazi camps in stadiums, haven't we?" said the president, alluding to videos, spread this week on social media, showing Israeli soldiers rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in their underwear at a sports stadium in Gaza.
"I point out a difference: "Hitler was not so rich; These (in reference to the Israeli leaders) are richer than Hitler. The West supports them, the United States gives them all kinds of support. And so they have killed about 20,000 Gazans," Erdogan said.
Turkey is a historic ally of Israel, and although relations have deteriorated since Erdogan came to power in 2002, with two periods of rupture in the last decade, the two countries reestablished full diplomatic relations last year, with presidential visits and plans for close cooperation.
Following the Hamas attack on October 7, Erdogan denounced the Israeli response of massive bombings on Gaza as a "war crime" and Israel withdrew its ambassador at the end of October.
Erdogan has always insisted on the protection of the Jewish community residing in Turkey and often recalls that Turkey opened its doors to numerous Jews persecuted in Nazi Germany, just as the Ottoman Empire welcomed the Sephardim expelled from Spain in the 15th century.
