Turkey-Israel in escalating row over Gaza dead
ISTANBUL: Turkey has told the Israeli consul general in Istanbul to leave the country temporarily, state media said yesterday, the latest in a series of tit- for- tat expulsions in a growing crisis over Israel’s killing of Palestinians on the Gaza border.
The Turkish foreign ministry has told the consul to leave Turkey “for a period of time”, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Turkey had already withdrawn its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations and told Israel’s ambassador to Ankara to leave, while Israel ordered the Turkish consul in Jerusalem to leave, also for an unspecified period of time.
Israel’s foreign ministry yesterday summoned the Turkish charge d’affaires in Israel to its Jerusalem headquarters for a reprimand over what it called in a statement “inappropriate treatment” of Israeli ambassador Eitan Naeh as he departed Istanbul airport.
The statement said that Naeh was subjected to “a stringent security check in the pre-arranged presence of the Turkish media.”
The Israeli statement invited local news teams to film Turkish charge d’affaires Umut Deniz when he arrives at the foreign ministry later in the afternoon.
The row, which on Tuesday saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu exchange bitter jibes on Twitter, threatens a 2016 deal on normalising ties after a longrunning crisis.
Turkey has expressed outrage over the killing by Israeli forces on Monday of 60 Palestinians during protests and clashes on the Gaza border and also blamed tensions on the US decision to move its embassy for Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
Erdogan will host an emergency summit meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ( OIC) in Istanbul tomorrow which he has said will send a “strong message to the world” on the issue.
The 2016 reconciliation deal ended a dispute over the May 2010 deadly storming of a Turkish ship by Israeli commandos that saw relations downgraded.
That deal was strongly backed by the United States, which was keen to see Israel make up with one of its few key Muslim partners.
But Erdogan, who regards himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause, has never shied away from criticism of Israel even as ministers pressed energy cooperation between the two sides.
Erdogan has accused Israel of “genocide” and told Netanyahu he is leading an “apartheid state” while having the “blood of Palestinians” on his hands.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, told Erdogan that as a leading supporter of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas “there’s no doubt he’s an expert on terror and slaughter”.
In a tweet titled “Reminder to Netanyahu”, Erdogan then denied that Hamas is a terror group, saying it is a “resistance movement that defends the Palestinian homeland against an occupying power”.
After talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday, Erdogan warned that history “will not forgive” Israel or the United States for moving the American embassy to Jerusalem in defiance of the Islamic world.
The Turkish presidency’s official website said that before leaving London Erdogan met a delegation of ultra- orthodox Jews from anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta.
It is a very small splinter group on the margins of ultra- Orthodox Jewry with members in Israel and abroad.
They oppose the existence of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. — AFP