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On Friday, Israel intercepted the last boat of a 44-vessel humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza, detaining hundreds of activists and drawing global condemnation.
The flotilla had hoped to break a blockade that U.N. agencies say has pushed more than half a million people into famine.
In August, a joint U.N. report confirmed famine in parts of Gaza and warned that hunger-related deaths are rising as aid remains blocked.
Just weeks earlier, a U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, urging states to halt arms transfers and hold Israeli leaders accountable.
At the same time, anti-immigration and anti-asylum protests have swept Europe, the United Kingdom and beyond, with thousands targeting vulnerable communities and leaving many residents, including long-settled minorities, feeling unsafe.
It was against this backdrop that Türkiye Today spoke with Scotland’s former First Minister Humza Yousaf and Dundee councillor Nadia El-Nakla on Oct. 2.
Our conversation explored the personal cost of politics, the rise of the far right, the United Kingdom’s recognition of Palestine, the failures of international law, and the struggle for equal media empathy when violence strikes outside Europe.
For both Yousaf and El-Nakla, the idea that politicians should keep emotion out of their work feels detached from reality.
They suggest that leadership is most meaningful when it is informed by lived experience, yet it also requires careful control of how those emotions are shown in public.
“The personal and the political are completely intertwined,” Yousaf said. “If people are struggling to pay their mortgage or facing challenges with health or education, that is deeply personal but also inherently political. In the case of Gaza, it’s important for politicians to speak personally as well as politically, to help others understand there is a human story behind each tragic statistic.”
El-Nakla described how the war in Gaza has forced her to speak more openly about her own life.
Her parents were trapped there for four weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, while other close relatives, including her cousin Sally and her children, as well as her aunt, remain in Gaza.
“Right from October 7, when Humza was first minister, I was sharing everything on a personal front rather than a political one,” she said. “My mind wasn’t in a place where I was thinking about influencing policy or trying to get a particular outcome. It was just sharing my personal story, which not everyone has, and that can be really powerful.”
She added that emotional honesty can inspire political action but should be measured.
“Emotions put us in motion. They drive you to want change. But they have to be managed. There have been times I’ve been deeply upset to the point of crying all day about Gaza, but when I go outside, I don’t want to present that. If you’re seen as overly emotional, your words might not reach those who need to hear them.”
Yousaf agreed that balance is key.
“People can now see whether someone is authentic,” he said. “Politicians, and I include myself in this, have often just read from a script. Having emotion is part of authenticity. But leadership also means rising above certain emotions at times and being rational when it matters.”
Together, they see authenticity and emotional honesty not as weaknesses but as essential to rebuilding trust between leaders and the people they represent.
Yousaf has repeatedly warned that Europe is experiencing a dangerous mainstreaming of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
During our conversation, he reaffirmed his long-standing view that the far right now poses the continent’s most urgent terrorist threat, as hatred moves from the fringes into the political mainstream.
“Many of us, myself included, have been warning for the last two decades that there is a rise of the far right, not just in Europe but across most of the western world, and that rise has been driven largely by hatred of Muslims,” Yousaf said.
“Political figures who were once on the fringes are now either leading governments or on the verge of leading governments. In the Netherlands, we have seen Geert Wilders make a career from Islamophobic comments. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, who has often denigrated Muslims, is now leading every single opinion poll and is likely to be the next prime minister. In France, the far-right National Front is again leading presidential polls. This hasn’t happened in a vacuum; it’s the product of years of appeasing and mainstreaming far-right rhetoric.”
He warned that even places once seen as tolerant are now vulnerable.
“Scotland has long been considered a welcoming country, but in recent weeks we’ve seen protests outside asylum-seeker hotels with people giving Nazi salutes and holding banners that say ‘kill them all’. We’ve had two attacks on mosques in just a few months, and a 17-year-old was sentenced under terrorism laws for trying to set fire to an Islamic centre in the west of Scotland. These are deeply troubling times, and they didn’t appear from nowhere; mainstream politics helped legitimize this language.”
El-Nakla focused on how young people are being drawn into extremist narratives through anger and disinformation.
“People have been taught not to look upward, not to question government or wealth, but to blame those next to them,” she said.
“Disinformation spreads into disengaged communities and hits them harder. Young people aren’t sure what to believe; they’re being fed lies by politicians who want to divide. We need to reach them early, give them safe spaces to talk openly about what they’re seeing and thinking, and challenge negativity before it hardens into hate.”
Discussing what can be done, she said, "Something we're doing in Dundee is that we're trying to create spaces in schools where young people can really talk openly about how they're feeling, what they're thinking, what they're witnessing, because it will design how they see the whole world."
They both stressed that tackling far-right extremism requires confronting the political mainstream that has normalized anti-Muslim rhetoric while also helping younger generations resist radicalisation.
The U.K.’s decision in September 2025 to recognize the State of Palestine was described by Yousaf as historic but “over 75 years too late.”
He explained that the move matters symbolically but will remain hollow unless it is backed by decisive political and economic pressure on Israel.
“Britain has a historic role, given the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, which helped create the very problems we face," Yousaf said. "This recognition will not stop the genocide we are witnessing in Gaza. It might have longer-term implications about a potential peace process, but it certainly will not stop what is happening now.”
He stressed that real pressure must echo how the world acted against apartheid South Africa.
“The genocide will only be stopped when the world and the international community apply economic and trade sanctions in the way they did against the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s,” he said.
“And equally by enacting a cultural and sporting boycott of Israel, isolating Israel so it is understood that it has become a rogue nation under Benjamin Netanyahu, a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Yousaf said the U.K.’s policy cannot be credible if it condemns atrocities while still supplying weapons.
“Recognition alone is not enough. We should not sell a single bullet, a munition component or any arms to Israel,” he said, adding that Britain cannot claim to defend human rights while enabling a government accused of committing genocide.
For both Yousaf and El-Nakla, the U.K.’s step will only matter if it becomes the starting point for real accountability rather than a symbolic gesture that leaves the status quo untouched.
Both Yousaf and El-Nakla said global media coverage continues to shape whose lives are considered valuable and whose suffering is normalized.
They criticized the double standard in how Western outlets frame violence, showing empathy when victims look familiar but detachment when atrocities strike elsewhere.
El-Nakla reflected on decades of Palestinians being cast as aggressors rather than human beings with ordinary lives.
“We’ve had decades of Palestinians being perceived as savages, as terrorists, as people you can’t connect with because they’re heartless and vicious and there’s no story there,” she said.
“That’s why it’s important when I talk to be personal, because I can talk about culture, heritage, and the fact that Palestine is one of the most educated places in the world. The reason they have so many doctors is because they value education. There are so many positive, wonderful things, but those stories don’t get told.”
She also described how media platforms can humanise or legitimise figures who spread hate.
“Nigel Farage was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to be on a mainstream game show in the jungle, where he was completely humanised,” she said. “People connected with him because they liked the same sports, and then he went back into politics and used that platform. Opportunities like that aren’t given to everyone. The media hold a huge responsibility in promoting certain politics.”
Yousaf said the reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, compared to the response to Gaza, exposed a deeper racism in international politics and reporting.
“The global response to Ukraine’s illegal invasion is one I support. We welcomed Ukrainian refugees into Scotland, gave them refuge and sanctuary,” he said, adding that he would have hoped the same would happen for Palestinians.
Unfortunately, not only were they not allowed to come to the United Kingdom, but the government is actually "supplying arms and weapons to the very country that is committing the genocide".
"Can you imagine for a second the U.K. government providing weapons to Russia in order to commit its atrocity and war of aggression in Ukraine?" he asked. "What would be the outrage and the outcry if that were happening. So I'm afraid, with that, hypocrisy is going to breed resentment and anger."
For many outside Europe, this double standard in media representation is not new.
Those living in Türkiye may remember the October 2015 train station attack that killed 109 and the March 2016 bombing that killed 37 in Ankara. It had received limited global coverage compared to the “Je Suis Charlie” campaign after the 2015 Paris attack.
Such disparities reveal whose grief is amplified and whose tragedies are sidelined.
The couple argued that social media now gives marginalized voices a way to challenge this bias, but mainstream news still shapes public empathy and political action. They warned that unless these patterns change, selective empathy will continue to fuel anger and deepen divisions.
Yousaf and El-Nakla spoke at length about how collective memory is shaped, and how the promise of “never again” has been applied unevenly across the world.
The former first minister argued that the institutions created after World War II to prevent future atrocities are failing as genocide unfolds in Gaza in full public view.
“The protection that international law was meant to give us, the United Nations, the conventions, came out of the ashes of World War II,” he said.
“Millions had died, nations had gone to war, and we promised never to repeat that. But how can those promises mean anything when we are witnessing the world’s first live-streamed genocide? That is not just my opinion; it’s the view of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Israeli human rights organisations, and a U.N. commission headed by the former president of the Rwanda genocide tribunal. There is almost unequivocal evidence, and yet the world watches on and many governments remain complicit.”
He warned that this collapse of trust risks fueling anger and making the world more dangerous.
El-Nakla spoke candidly about what it feels like to watch these failures while raising children in Scotland.
“Our lives—brown lives, black lives—are not held with the same esteem,” she said.
“My dream when I was a child was always to work in the United Nations. And now I see that the mechanisms that exist do not protect babies and children. It’s heartbreaking. There are no words for what’s happening. I feel like I have no words left to describe how I truly feel. It’s hard to explain. I’m really, really... All I know is we’re just never going to be the same again. I think that’s for a lot of people around the world.”
She added that her own children, now 16, 6 and 1, are already absorbing these realities.
“The 6-year-old is very aware, and the 16-year-old is engaged,” she said. “I’m not sure how it will impact them, but it will. It’s difficult.”
Both warned that when international law appears meaningless, it not only abandons those in crisis but also erodes the moral authority that democracies depend on to stand against future atrocities.
In the final minutes of the interview, Yousaf briefly addressed criticism of his decision to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year.
He said the meeting focused on Gaza and that he is “never afraid to raise human rights issues with any government,” framing the encounter as diplomatic engagement rather than endorsement.
Final thoughts
Over the course of the interview, Yousaf and El-Nakla discussed how personal experience informs their approach to public service when international crises affect their own communities and loved ones.
Although deeply saddened by what they have witnessed, they have not lost their determination to push for change. They use their voices and positions to increase representation, foster empathy, and help citizens respond with compassion rather than extremism, while also working to battle disinformation that fuels hate.
They continue to appear in interviews, public discussions and events, sharing difficult personal experiences or commenting on incidents that affect them directly because they believe those perspectives need to be heard if change is to happen. Their approach shows how lived experience can inform leadership without replacing reason or responsibility.
4 min read
