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Erdogan calls for Islamic alliance against Israel
He made the comment after describing what Palestinian and Turkish officials said was the killing by Israeli troops of a Turkish-American woman taking part in a protest on Friday against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries,” Erdogan said at an Islamic schools’ association event near Istanbul.
He said recent steps that Turkey has taken to improve ties with Egypt and Syria are aimed at “forming a line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism,” which he said also threatened Lebanon and Syria.
Erdogan hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Ankara this week and they discussed the Gaza war and ways to further repair their long-frozen ties during what was the first such presidential visit in 12 years.
Israel’s military said after Friday’s incident that it was looking into reports that a female foreign national “was killed as a result of shots fired in the area. The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review.
Since last October when Hamas resistance group launched an operation against Israeli positions in the occupied territories, the regime has killed nearly 41,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – mostly women and children.
The Israel’s war on Gaza entered its 12th month Saturday with little sign of respite for the Palestinian territory.
‘Eleven months. Enough’
Marking the anniversary, UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini posted on X on Saturday: “Eleven months. Enough. No one can take this any longer. Humanity must prevail. Cease-fire now.”
International pressure to end the Israel’s war was further underlined by Friday’s shooting dead in the West Bank of the Turkish-American activist.
The family of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has demanded an independent investigation into her death, saying on Saturday her life “was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military”.
The UN rights office said Israeli forces killed Eygi with a “shot in the head”.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank – where about 490,000 people live – are illegal under international law.
Since October, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 662 Palestinians in the West Bank which Israel occupied in 1967, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Eygi’s death came on the day Israeli forces withdrew from a deadly 10-day raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, where AFP journalists reported residents returning home to widespread destruction.