AJC Outraged Over Turkish Leader's Provocative Rhetoric

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Jul 20, 2014, 04:13 ET

NEW YORK, July 20, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC expressed its outrage over the incendiary rhetoric of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, whose continuous verbal assaults on Israel have fueled violent demonstrations against Israeli diplomatic outposts and created a permissive environment for attacks on Jews.

In recent days mobs have attacked Israel's embassy and ambassador's residence in Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul, prompting Israel to withdraw diplomatic families and formally protest the government's failure to honor its treaty obligation to protect foreign missions. The leader of the extremist Islamist group IHH, which has enjoyed Erdogan's support for its pro-Hamas activism, called publicly for attacks on the country's Jewish community.

"With his loose – and historically ignorant – rhetoric analogizing the Holocaust and Israel's defense against Hamas terror attacks, and with his relentless and outrageously false accusations of Israel's 'genocidal' intentions toward the Palestinians, Prime Minister Erdogan has created a climate that not only makes the restoration of Turkish-Israeli relations unthinkable in the near term," said AJC Executive Director David Harris, "but threatens the security and well-being of a Jewish community that has thrived in predominantly Muslim Turkey for more than 500 years."

In a belated response to last week's IHH call for revenge attacks on Jews, Erdogan on July 19 issued a statement declaring, "I don't find appropriate any attitude against the Jewish citizens of Turkey." But in the same statement, the Prime Minister blasted the "Israeli cruel administration that is creating terror," said his government is "targeting them and make our international efforts accordingly," and observed, "The ones who damn Hitler day and night have exceeded him in barbarism."

"Prime Minister Erdogan's astonishing ignorance about the Holocaust cannot go unremarked," said Harris. "To somehow equate the attempted slaughter of the entirety of the Jewish people, a monstrous industrial-scale project that cost the lives of 6 million Jews along with millions of other victims, with Israel's effort to defend its citizens from daily barrages of 100 and more lethal rockets from a territory controlled by a terrorist organization is as appalling as it is offensive. The Prime Minister's poisonous rhetoric – repeated in the service of his campaign for president – is a disservice to truth, and to the traditions and the future of the Republic of Turkey."

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SOURCE American Jewish Committee