Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to reignite his country’s feud with Israel Wednesday, despite reports of bilateral diplomatic attempts to normalise relations between the estranged former allies in recent weeks, as he told the Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Vienna that Zionism constitutes a “crime against humanity”.
In an address in Vienna's Hofburg Palace to the fifth meeting of the forum Turkey co-initiated with Spain to "galvanize international action against extremism through the forging of international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue," Erdogan said that whilst “we should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them”.
“Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it becomes unavoidable that Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity,” Erdogan continued.
His comments, delivered in his native language with simultaneous translation provided by the UN itself, provoked uproar amongst lobby groups, with UN Watch leading the charge in condemning his “Ahmadinejad-style pronouncements”, invoking comparisons with the widely controversial Iranian leader.
Such comments “will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel,” continued the human rights monitoring group’s statement.
Israeli media reports claimed the Jewish State had reached out to Ankara in the last two weeks ahead of US President Barack Obama and newly-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry’s joint visit to Israel next month.
A series of messages initiated y Israeli diplomats apparently sought to create a more “positive dynamic” between the two countries, ahead of Kerry’s arrival in Turkey as part of his current tour of Europe and the Middle East.
Turkey and Israel have not enjoyed diplomatic relations since the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident of 2010, when an Israeli raid on a ship carrying goods to the blockaded Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals, infuriating Erdogan.
Kerry was widely-anticipated to take in Jerusalem on this, his first foreign trip since assuming office at the beginning of this month, but postponed his visit to coincide with Obama’s own first trip since coming to power in 2008, citing Israel’s delays in forming a coalition government following last month’s inconclusive national elections.
Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post quoted an unnamed government official Monday as claiming both Israel and Turkey had expressed hopes of insitating a more positive dynamic in their relationship, whilst conceded that hopes of returning to the once positive relationship they enjoyed a decade ago before Erdogan’s AKP party rose to power were unlikely to come to fruition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office meanwhile declined to respond to Israeli tv reports Saturday that National Security Adviser Yaacov Amidror met three weeks ago in Rome with the director general of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, or a media report Sunday that the Prime Minister had rejected an offer by outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak to assume responsibility for the Mavi Marmara raid and apologise for “operational mishaps”.
In Vienna, UN Watch further condemned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - who attended the meeting - for neglecting to censure Erdogan’s remarks, instead choosing to stay silent whilst sharing the stage with the Turkish Premier. “We remind Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that his predecessor Kofi Annan recognized that the UN’s 1975 Zionism-is-racism resolution was an expression of anti-Semitism, and he welcomed its repeal,” the statement said.
The contentious resolution the group invoked, which was adopted by a General Assembly vote by 72 to 35 votes against with 32 abstentions detailed that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.
Ban seemingly sought to restore calm to proceedings at the forum, as he contended that Israelis and Palestinians remain likewise polarised, while movement in the Middle East peace process is “overdue”. The region’s youth, he added, are at risk of growing up with a “demonised, dehumanised – and utterly false – concept of their neighbours”.