Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan Accuses Israel of Curbing Muslim Prayer
Image by Getty Images
– President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Israel of restricting Muslim worship while calling on all Muslims to embrace the Palestinian cause and protect Jerusalem.
Erdogan made the call to Muslims on Tuesday during public remarks at the Symposium of Jerusalem Platform in Istanbul. A Turkish government document sent to JTA summarized his remarks.
“It is not only the duty of unarmed Palestinian children to protect Al-Aqsa mosque,” Erdogan said.
He added: “We will continue to support Jerusalem with all our means as we have done so far. We will work with might and main to protect Palestine and the sanctity of Al-Aqsa mosque.”
In accusing Israel of restricting Muslim worship, he said it was “harming the sanctity” of Al-Aqsa and that “Policies of oppression, isolation and discrimination have been pursued since 1948.”
He referred specifically to the proposed Israeli legislation to limit the volume and the hours of the Muslim call to prayer, calling it “dangerous.”
“This practice is offensive not only for the Palestinians, but for all Muslims,” Erdogan said. “We have communicated with the Israeli officials our concerns on the kind of dangerous consequences this might have, if such a bill is enacted.”
Erdogan threatened that the region “will not find peace until the wound in the Middle East is treated.” He called for “an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with the capital, East Jerusalem, based on the borders of 1967,” as the “only way to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.”
His comments come as Israel and Turkey are taking the last steps toward fulfilling a reconciliation agreement signed over the summer restoring diplomatic ties following a six-year freeze.
Erdogan also addressed the ongoing civil war in Syria, saying that Turkey was forced to intervene in Syria alongside the rebel’s Free Syrian army in order to “ensure justice and put an end to the reign of the oppressor Al-Assad,” while condemning the United Nations for its inaction and lack of attention to the Muslim world.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
