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Erdoğan says Gaza war ‘shame of humanity,” calls for permanent ceasfire

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Thursday that the “genocide” in Gaza is the “shame of humanity” as he called for renewed efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire, Agence France-Presse reported.

Erdoğan, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, renewed his attacks on Israel as he arrived in Tirana, the first stop of a Balkan tour that will also take him to Serbia.

“The international community, we must do our best to urgently guarantee a permanent ceasefire and exert the necessary pressure on Israel,” he told a joint press conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

“The genocide that has been going on in Gaza for the past year is the common shame of all humanity,” he added.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

According to the health ministry in Gaza, 42,065 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

Erdoğan has branded Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and compared him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

“The aggression led by the Netanyahu government now threatens the world order beyond the region,” Erdoğan said.

Great Mosque of Tirana

Later Thursday, Erdoğan will inaugurate the Great Mosque of Tirana, the largest Muslim place of worship in the Balkans, which has been paid for by Turkey.

Some 600 Turkish companies employ more than 15,000 people in Albania, Erdoğan said in February when he hosted Rama.

It is one of the five biggest foreign investors in Albania, he said, with $3.5 billion (3.2 billion euros) committed.

The two NATO member countries also have close military ties, with Turkey supplying Tirana with its Bayraktar TB2 drones.

Erdoğan, seeking to boost ties in a region once ruled by the Ottoman Empire, will head late on Thursday to Serbia, where Turkey made a diplomatic comeback in 2017 with a landmark Erdoğan visit to Belgrade.

The trip helped Erdoğan and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, mend ties.

The five-century Ottoman presence in Serbia has traditionally weighed heavily on Belgrade-Ankara relations.

Another source of tension has been Turkey’s historic ties with Serbia’s former breakaway province of Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade still refuses to recognize.

But Erdoğan’s 2017 visit repaired the relationship with Serbia, Belgrade analyst Vuk Vuksanovic told AFP.

Since then “the Balkans is quite a success story for Turkey,” he added.

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