Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan slammed Israel and Syria on Wednesday, calling the former a nuclear threat and threatening the latter with unilateral sanctions, despite the failure of the UN Security Council to adopt a stance against its southern neighbor. Erdoğan’s statements came on the same day Turkey’s military forces conducted a cross-border operation into Iraq and defended its move to deploy early warning radar system against Iranian nuclear capabilities, a report from hurriyetdaily said. “Right now, I see Israel as a threat for its region because it has an atomic bomb,” the report quoted Erdoğan as saying in a foreign policy speech during an official visit to South Africa. The prime minister also accused Israel of committing “state terrorism.”
Erdoğan’s remarks came in response to comments from an Israeli Embassy diplomat in South Africa who blamed the radical Islamic organization Hamas for launching rockets into Israeli territory and criticized Turkey for downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel. “Your question opened my way for a reply. One cannot transfer atomic bombs and phosphorus bombs through tunnels [linking Egypt to Gaza],” Erdoğan said. “Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by bombs that have rained down on them from Israel.” Erdoğan continued his criticism: “You sleep at night peacefully and secure,” he told the diplomat to applause by South African foreign affairs officials and members of the diplomatic corps. “Yet Palestinians can’t find a single trace of peace in Palestine.”
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