President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey repeated a pledge Saturday to conquer Jerusalem during a speech in Mardin, Turkey, raising eyebrows and signaling new tensions in the relationship with Israel.
It was not the first time that Erdoğan has made such claims: in 2020, he said that “Jerusalem is our city,” referring to the Ottoman Empire that collapsed after the First World War.
The Times of Israel reported at the time:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday implied that Jerusalem belongs to Turkey, referring to the Ottoman Empire’s control over the city for much of the modern era.
“In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us,” he told Turkish lawmakers during a major policy speech in Ankara. “Our first qibla [direction of prayer in Islam] al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are the symbolic mosques of our faith. In addition, this city is home to the holy places of Christianity and Judaism.”
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It is the third-holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina, but it is the holiest city in Judaism.
Israel and Turkey, a member of NATO, have historically been allies. But Erdoğan has inflamed tensions by supporting Hamas terrorists and verbally attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has responded in kind.
With Turkish forces backing the rebels who over threw the Syrian regime earlier this month, and advancing against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria, there is the potential for even greater friction between Turkey and Israel, which has advanced forces into the eastern Golan and Mount Hermon in an attempt to protect its borders.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.