Russian strongman Vladimir Putin enthusiastically praised Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday for his “leading role” in supporting the jihadist terror organization Hamas, describing Erdogan as “doing everything” to improve the situation in Gaza “for the better.”
Putin made the remarks during his traditional end-of-year press conference on Thursday, which lasted four hours and three minutes. Putin set his own record for longest end-of-year press conference in 2013, answering hand-picked questions from sympathetic reporters for nearly five hours.
A Turkish journalist asked Putin on Thursday his opinion of Turkey’s role in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, a Sunni jihadist group that triggered the current war by invading Israel from its stronghold in Gaza on October 7 and killing over 1,200, engaging in a wide variety of atrocities that included the slaughter of entire families in their homes, gang rape, torture, and desecration of corpses.
(L-R) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for a photo before a trilateral meeting on Syria in Tehran on July 19, 2022. (SERGEI SAVOSTYANOV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
Erdogan has enthusiastically supported Hamas, insisting it is “not a terrorist organization” and instead describing the Israeli government as “terrorist” for launching a self-defense operation in Gaza.
Putin appeared to largely agree with that assessment on Thursday, describing the situation in Gaza – where Israel is making significant advances in targeting Hamas terror hotspots – as a “catastrophe,” and praising Erdogan for allegedly playing a constructive role in the region.
“I would like to note the significant, leading role of Turkish President Erdogan in the issue of restoring the situation in Gaza,” Putin told the Turkish reporter, according to a translation by the Russian news agency Tass. “He is certainly one of the leaders of the international community who is paying attention to this tragedy and doing everything to change the situation for the better, to create conditions for long-term peace.”
“God bless him,” Putin added of his counterpart.
On the war against Hamas, Putin called it a “catastrophe” and used the opportunity to claim that Israel’s operations, featuring rigorous attempts to protect Palestinian civilians used as human shields by Hamas, are less humane than Putin’s ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which has targeted civilian residences and infrastructure for nearly two years.
“Let’s see what is happening in the special military operation and in the Gaza strip, everyone can see the difference,” Putin claimed. “Nothing like that is happening in Ukraine when we compare it to the Gaza strip. There are thousands of women and children, that the Secretary General of the U.N. has said that today, the Gaza strip is the biggest cemetery of children in the world.”
“This evaluation means a lot, this is an objective evaluation,” Putin insisted.
In reality, the United Nations has a lengthy record of anti-Israel bias and antisemitism, including flagrantly antisemitic statements by its top officials on “Palestine” and actively inciting anti-Jewish hatred through its Palestinian “Relief and Works Agency” (UNRWA), which has for years instituted jihadist indoctrination programs for children in Gaza.
Putin’s description of Erdogan as a peacemaker exhibiting leadership on the subject of the Gaza war also omits Erdogan’s most high-profile displays since October 7, which have included repeated insistences that Hamas is “not a terrorist organization” and crass dismissals of the atrocities committed that day. Among Erdogan’s first actions following October 7 was the organization of a rally in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport in support of Hamas. The “Great Palestine Rally” attracted 1.5 million Islamists, according to Turkish media reports, and featured Erdogan in a keffiyeh legitimizing Hamas as a “resistance” movement.
“What was Gaza and Palestine in 1947, what is it today? Israel, how did you get here? How did you get in? You are an invader, you are a [terrorist] organization,” Erdogan proclaimed, while taking a brief moment to describe October 7 as “regrettable.”
In this handout photo provided by the Turkish Presidency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting, in Tehran, Iran, July 19, 2022. (Turkish Presidency via AP, File)
“Certainly, in such a climate of fire and blood, there have been regrettable events,” Erdogan insisted. “However, none of these can serve as an excuse for campaigns aimed at discrediting the resistance carried out by the Palestinian people under various names.”
Erdogan has repeated on other occasions that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization.” His Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), meanwhile, is seeking to file charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged “genocide.”
While Putin has personally not been as vocal a supporter of Hamas, his government has embraced the terrorist organization, welcoming a Hamas delegation for talks to Moscow in late October – a move the Israeli government described as “obscene.”
At the United Nations, the Russian government has used its veto in the Security Council to silence attempts to condemn Hamas and introduced attempted legislation to condemn Israel for defending itself against terrorism.
The pro-Hamas atmosphere in Russia fueled by Putin led to a riot in late October in the majority-Muslim region of Dagestan, where hundreds of people stormed the local airport looking for flights arriving from Israel, shouting “Allahu akbar” and threatening to kill suspected Jews. The mob was waving Palestinian flags.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.