ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel on Sunday of committing atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon and said Turkey could engage with Israel militarily, escalating his rhetoric at a conference in Istanbul and widening a diplomatic feud that had already sharpened after a Turkish court indictment of Israeli leaders two days earlier.
Speaking at the International Asia-Political Parties Conference, Erdogan said Israel was carrying out a “blood-stained genocide network” that continued to kill “innocent children, women, and civilians” without regard for human values. He said, “We must be strong to prevent Israel from doing this to Palestine,” and added: “Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do the same to them.” Later on Sunday, he told reporters there was nothing to prevent Turkey from acting, saying it only needed to be strong enough to take such steps.
The Turkish president also cited a law recently passed by the Knesset to approve death penalties against terrorists, saying it was aimed “only for Palestinian prisoners.” He described Israeli actions as “barbaric” and said that despite a ceasefire, Israel had forced 1.2 million Lebanese to leave their homes because of attacks on civilian settlements. Erdogan’s remarks fit a long-running campaign in which he presents Turkey as a defender of Palestinian rights and casts Israel as the aggressor.
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The exchange lands after a Turkish court on Friday indicted Benjamin Netanyahu and 35 other Israeli officials over the naval interception of the October 2025 “Sumud” Gaza flotilla, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. That move gave Ankara fresh legal ammunition in a dispute that has moved far beyond rhetoric, and it came as Israel and the United States rejected claims that Lebanon was included in the current ceasefire with Iran.
Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu answered with a blistering attack of his own, calling Erdogan a “pathetic tyrant of a country with a collapsing economy and a dead democracy.” He said he would bring a proposal before the Israeli government to sever diplomatic ties with Turkey completely. Eliyahu also accused Erdogan of hypocrisy, invoking Turkey’s history in Cyprus, its treatment of Kurds and the Armenian Genocide, and called him a “megalomaniacal dictator” with “imperialist ambitions.” The minister said, “The hypocritical Erdogan doesn't impress anyone with this current circus,” and added that Turkey, “which conquered Northern Cyprus and controls Kurdish territories in the east,” had no standing to lecture Israel on morality.
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The sharpest question now is whether the verbal escalation stays where it is or becomes a policy break. Erdogan has made himself the loudest regional critic of Israel’s war conduct, while Israel is responding in kind and moving to harden the diplomatic split.
