In an interview, Erdogan compared Israel's ongoing treatment of the Palestinians living in Gaza to Hitler's treatment of Jews and others during World War II. Erdogan would add that Western nations like the United States are also complicit in that they are funding and sending arms to Israel to commit what he described as war crimes.
Any academics and scientists who now find themselves being persecuted for holding a similar stance in support of the people of Gaza are welcome in Turkey, Erdogan further stated, offering a lifeline to others around the world who face persecution for opposing Israel's actions.
"They used to speak ill of Hitler," Erdogan said. "What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not."
"He is richer than Hitler; he gets the support from the West. All sorts of support come from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans."
(Related: Did you catch what conservative personality Ben Shapiro did to Candace Owens, one of his employees, after she tweeted scripture condemning Israel's murderous actions in Gaza?)
Netanyahu responds by condemning Turkish genocide of Kurds
In response to Erdogan's statements, Netanyahu stated that the Turkish president is the last person who should be lecturing Israel about war crimes, considering Turkey's dark past.
"Erdogan, who commits genocide against the Kurds, who holds a world record for imprisoning journalists who oppose his rule, is the last person who can preach morality to us," Netanyahu said.
Despite all this back-and-forth rhetoric between Erdogan and Netanyahu, Turkey has continued to maintain commercial ties with Israel. This ongoing alliance continues to draw criticism from opposition parties as well as from the leaders of Iran.
Ever since the October 7 Hamas attack, trade between Turkey and Israel has fallen. Though Turkey still belongs to NATO, it does not view Hamas as a terrorist organization and continues to oppose Israel's war on Gaza.
"Erdogan is not a moral authority on anything," wrote one incensed commenter concerning the matter.
"What would he do to protect his citizens if attacked?" asked another in support of Israel.
Many others addressed the hypocrisy of Erdogan in condemning Netanyahu for committing basically the same crimes against humanity that Israel is committing against the people of Gaza, except Turkey is persecuting and killing Kurds rather than Palestinians.
One of our own readers left a comment pointing out that this whole situation is anomalous in that Israel created Hamas back in the 1970s to counteract the regime of Yasser Arafat.
"This is all ridiculous if you consider the fact that those financing and directing Israel are the same ones financing and directing Hamas," this person wrote. "These people have put themselves up so high on pedestals that they can't see what's really going on."
"Time to stop focusing on the puppets and start focusing on the puppet masters."
In rebuttal, another of our readers commented on a different story by stating that Israel "didn't actually create [Hamas] from scratch."
"Hamas / Mujama al-Islamiya was founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," this person wrote.
"Israel didn't crackdown [sic] on them because they saw them as a counterweight to Yasser Arafat's PLO who was their main enemy then. Israel recognized them and assisted them for that reason, although assistance is disputed by some Israeli officials."
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