Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday that antisemitism, like Islamophobia, is a crime against humanity and cannot be seen as legitimate, speaking at a fast-breaking dinner in Ankara with representatives of Turkey’s religious minority communities.
“Just as Islamophobia is a crime against humanity, antisemitism is also a crime, an evil that cannot be considered reasonable or legitimate,” Erdoğan said.
At the same event Erdoğan said Turkey was a country where freedom of religion and conscience prevailed and where members of different faith communities could maintain their own institutions. He also said Ankara had no tolerance for groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), that attack mosques, churches and synagogues.
The remarks came during Ramadan at a state-hosted dinner that Turkish media presented as an outreach event to non-Muslim communities in the country.
Turkey’s Jewish community, centered in İstanbul and estimated at about 12,000 to 16,000 people, has long faced antisemitic rhetoric and security concerns despite formal state recognition and protection.
However, the remarks are likely to be read in the context of the war of words over Gaza, where pro-Palestinian groups and anti-Zionist Jewish activists have long argued that governments and public institutions often blur the line between antisemitism and opposition to Zionism, the ideology that led to the establishment of Israel. Those groups say hatred of Jews must be confronted but argue that criticism of Zionism or of Israeli state policy should not be treated as antisemitic by default.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a US-based anti-Zionist Jewish group, has publicly argued that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
That dispute has become sharper as genocide accusations against Israel over Gaza have gained support from major rights groups and United Nations investigators.
Amnesty International said in December 2024 that it had concluded Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In September 2025 the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip and urged states to meet their obligations under international law.
Some pro-Palestinian voices argue that amid a genocide in Gaza and what they see as broad support for Israel within majority Jewish communities and institutions, accusations of antisemitism no longer carry the moral force they once did and are increasingly viewed as an attempt to silence anger directed at a system of domination.