An American Jewish organization is demanding that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan return an award it gave him a decade ago, due to his recent remarks on Israel’s military operation in Gaza, reported The Jerusalem Post.
Calling him “arguably the most virulent anti-Israel leader in the world,” American Jewish Congress President Jack Rosen accused the prime minister of “spewing dangerous rhetoric for political gain and inciting the Turkish population to violence against the Jewish people.”
“We want [the award] back,” Rosen wrote Erdogan, informing him that his statements had not only done “irreparable damage to Jewish-Turkish relations and put innocent people at risk,” but had caused him to forfeit his seat “at the table of legitimate mediators working to end the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
Since Israel’s ground forces entered the Gaza strip, Erdogan has been among Israel’s harshest critics, calling it a “terror state” and accusing Jerusalem of perpetrating a “systematic genocide” against the Palestinians.
Israeli barbarism, he said, has surpassed that of Hitler.