Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would not accept any lectures from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the Turkish leader accused Israel of being a terrorist state over the weekend, Reuters reported.
“Mr. Erdoğan has attacked Israel. I‘m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people,” Netanyahu said at a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Israel is a terror state, terror. Look how these terrorists dragged a blindfolded 14-year-old boy [by the arms],” Erdoğan said, adding: “Quds [Jerusalem] is the light of our eyes. We will not leave it to the mercy of a child killer state,” Erdoğan had said during a Justice and Development Party (AKP) congress in Sivas on Sunday.
Erdoğan was responding to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which he called “null and void” for Turkey and said it would not be so easily implemented.
İbrahim Kalın, spekoperson of Erdoğan, condemned Netanyahu’s remarks.