ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza conflict, said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organization but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands.
NATO member Turkiye condemned the civilian deaths caused by Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel, but also urged Israeli forces to act with restraint in their response. Ankara has strongly criticized Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
“Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” he told lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith.
Unlike many of its NATO allies and the European Union, Turkiye does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization and hosts members of the group on its territory. Ankara backs a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Erdogan also slammed Western powers for supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza and called for an immediate cease-fire, the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and for Muslim countries to work together to stop the violence.
“The perpetrators of the massacre and the destruction taking place in Gaza are those providing unlimited support for Israel,” Erdogan said. “Israel’s attacks on Gaza, for both itself and those supporting them, amount to murder and mental illness.”
Israel rejected Erdogan’s description of Hamas, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat calling the group “a despicable terrorist organization.”
“Even the Turkish president’s attempt to defend the terrorist organization and his inciting words will not change the horrors that the whole world has seen,” Haiat wrote on social media platform X.
Erdogan’s comments also drew a swift rebuke from Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who said they were “grave and disgusting and did not help with de-escalation.” He urged Italy’s foreign minister to lodge a formal protest with Ankara.
Shares in Istanbul dropped 7 percent on Wednesday in a slide that traders attributed to Erdogan’s comments on Hamas.
The fighting in Gaza comes at a time when Turkiye is working to mend its ties with Israel after years of acrimony, focusing on energy as an area of cooperation.
Indicating that those normalization efforts were now suspended, Erdogan accused Israel of taking advantage of Turkiye’s “good intentions” and said he had canceled a previously planned visit to Israel.
“I shook the hand of this man named Netanyahu one time in my life,” Erdogan said, referring to his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.
“If he (Netanyahu) had continued with good intentions, our relations might have been different, but now, unfortunately, that will not happen either because they took advantage of our good intentions,” he added.
Erdogan accused the West of hypocrisy for failing to respond to what he called Israel’s “intentional massacre” in Gaza with the same decisiveness as it did to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organization, cancels trip to Israel
https://arab.news/pt4eq
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organization, cancels trip to Israel
- Unlike many of its NATO allies and the European Union, Turkiye does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization and hosts members of the group on its territory
- Shares in Istanbul dropped 7 percent on Wednesday in a slide that traders attributed to Erdogan’s comments on Hamas
Iraqi army fully takes over key base following US withdrawal
BAGHDAD: US forces have fully withdrawn from an air base in western Iraq in implementation of an agreement with the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down a US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group in Iraq by September 2025, with US forces departing bases where they had been stationed.
However, a small unit of US military advisers and support personnel remained. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani in October told journalists that the agreement originally stipulated a full pullout of US forces from the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Iraq by September. But “developments in Syria” since then required maintaining a “small unit” of between 250 and 350 advisers and security personnel at the base.
Now all US personnel have departed.
Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah oversaw the assignment of tasks and duties to various military units at the base on Saturday following the withdrawal of US forces and the Iraqi Army’s full assumption of control over the base, the military said in a statement.
The statement added that Yarallah “instructed relevant authorities to intensify efforts, enhance joint work, and coordinate between all units stationed at the base, while making full use of its capabilities and strategic location.”
A Ministry of Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly confirmed that all US forces had departed the base and had also removed all American equipment from it.
There was no statement from the US military on the withdrawal.
US forces have retained a presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and in neighboring Syria.
The departure of US forces may strengthen the hand of the government in discussions around disarmament of non-state armed groups in the country, some of which have used the presence of US troops as justification for keeping their own weapons.
Al-Sudani said in a July interview with The Associated Press that once the coalition withdrawal is complete, “there will be no need or no justification for any group to carry weapons outside the scope of the state.”
