Turkiye views Israel’s expansionist policies as a threat to its national security, the Speaker of Parliament in Ankara has said. Numan Kurtulmus made the comment in his speech during a special parliamentary session to discuss Israeli attacks and developments in the Middle East.
“We are holding this extraordinary session today to discuss the massacres that Israel has been committing in the Gaza Strip for more than a year. They are major crimes against humanity that amount to genocide, in addition to its recent attacks, especially against Lebanon, which the entire world is watching live,” said Kurtulmus. “Israel’s aggression and expansionist policies in the region have become a major threat to Turkish national security.”
The speaker pointed out that Israel’s plans for occupation, annexation and destruction did not begin last year, and it would be misleading to believe that. “The first chapter of this scenario came into effect in 1917 when the Ottoman Empire was forced to withdraw from the Palestinian territories and then the British Mandate was declared. The first function of the British Mandate administration was to settle the invaders who were brought from all over the world, especially from Eastern Europe, in the Palestinian territories and open some settlement areas for them.”
The process that began in 1917 ended with the partition plan in 1947, added Kurtulmus. “Israel continues its project of annexing, destroying and occupying most of the Palestinian territories, and is advancing more and more every day.”
What the Turkish official called “the second chapter of this ongoing scenario in the Middle East” began with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Almost all countries in the region have been destabilised, divided and fragmented and have become politically unmanageable due to the American occupation of Iraq. The current situation in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Libya demonstrates this.”
Events in those countries, he said, have pushed the people of the Middle East to a state of complete despair, hesitation and division, within less than 20 years. “October 2023 is when Israel began attacking the region with all its might, with the support of the US, along with some other Western countries [committing] the most violent crimes in human history.”
Israel has carried out its genocide in Gaza with the full backing of the US. The Israeli army has killed 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, and wounded 97,500 more. An estimated 11,000 are missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by the occupation state.
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