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Türkiye on Thursday condemned remarks by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz targeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing him of using “undignified and inappropriate” language and saying the comments could not obscure the situation in Gaza.
Turkish Communications Director Burhanettin Duran said Katz’s remarks failed to divert attention from Israel’s “record of genocide in the eyes of humanity or before history.”
The statement also referred to Katz’s reported interest in Turkish television dramas, saying history is not always learned from television series but is instead recorded in the collective memory of nations and the conscience of humanity.
“Today, history is being written before our eyes,” the statement said, adding that under Erdogan’s leadership, Türkiye would continue to advocate for justice, peace and the rights of those affected by conflict.
“Meanwhile, the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza continue to face serious allegations and scrutiny from the international community and under international law,” it added.
The statement concluded by invoking lines from a Turkish poet, emphasizing that silence would not erase history or truth.
“If we remain silent, history will not. If history falls silent, truth will not.”
Ruling Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, Deputy Chairman Hayati Yazici also criticized Katz’s remarks targeting Erdogan’s speech at the 81st U.N. General Assembly.
In a post on his social media account, Yazici said Katz’s “insolent remarks” targeting Erdogan were “an admission of the helplessness of the genocidal network and the political deadlock it has fallen into.”
“Becoming so ugly as to call the president of the Republic of Türkiye a ‘paper sultan’ does not clean the record of those who rain bombs on children in Gaza,” Yazici said.
“You are the representatives of a mentality that sees killing as power. Türkiye, under the leadership of our president, acts today, as it did yesterday, with an understanding that sees power as standing with what is right, justice and humanity,” he added.
Yazici said the reality of Gaza voiced by Erdogan from the U.N. podium “will not change because of this insolence by Katz.”
He described Erdogan as a world leader who carried the Palestinian cause from the U.N. podium to the conscience of the world and did not remain silent in the face of occupation and oppression.
“We will not let Netanyahu and his murder network go until they are held accountable for the innocents killed in Gaza, the cities razed to the ground and the human tragedy unfolding before the eyes of the world,” Yazici said.
“The genocidal Israeli administration should know that you cannot silence Türkiye by threatening it. You cannot overshadow Palestine’s just cause by targeting our president. You will not be able to escape accountability by distorting the truth,” he added.
Yazici said Türkiye would not remain silent in the face of oppression and would continue to defend the Palestinian people’s struggle for rights and law.
Erdogan told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that Gaza had become “the world’s largest children’s cemetery” and accused Israel of pursuing what he called a “genocidal mentality,” in his 16th address to the world body.
Erdogan said more than 1,500 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed even after a cease-fire brokered with the involvement of U.S. President Donald Trump and other countries, including Türkiye.
He said the Palestinian resistance movement had agreed to move into the second phase of the peace plan, but that the Israeli government was refusing to halt what he described as its occupation.
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