Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hit back at Israel on Tuesday after the country unanimously voted on Sunday to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.
The recognition and the subsequent spat is the latest episode in a worsening relationship between the two countries, which has taken a nosedive with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands,” Erdoğan said after a cabinet meeting. “In our history there is no genocide, no massacre, no oppression, and no colonialism.”
Erdoğan has repeatedly said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and last week Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described Israel’s Armenian genocide recognition vote as “an attempt to cover up their own crimes.” Israel’s government has strongly denied committing genocide.
Under discussion is the Ottoman Empire campaign that is estimated to have killed more than 1 million Armenians and is widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Numerous EU members recognize the events as a genocide, and in 2015 the European Parliament passed an anti-genocide resolution marking the events’ centenary.
Many scholars also consider Israel’s actions in Gaza to constitute genocide.
In Tuesday’s address, Erdoğan argued that Israel’s recognition is undercut both by its own “barbarity in Gaza” and by Turkey’s history of rescuing Jews from the Holocaust during the Second World War.
“There is the virtue of protecting those who fled from … Nazi persecution,” Erdoğan said. “Those who slander Turkey and the Turkish nation … know this best, if they look at their own history.”
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.