The barbed exchange was a return to form for the two leaders, whose long history of public attacks on each other has ebbed and flowed alongside Israel and Turkey’s on-again, off-again alliance. The attacks had halted in the last year or two as Jerusalem and Ankara rekindled their relationship, but the détente has seemingly fallen apart over the Israel-Hamas war.
During an opening speech at an award ceremony in the Turkish capital, Erdogan said the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust was not as bad as Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, and likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Strip to that of Jews rounded up in concentration and death camps.
“We’ve seen the Nazi camps of Israel. How does this happen? They used to talk about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler?” he asked of Israel.
“This is even worse than Hitler,” he added to raucous applause. “What Netanyahu is doing is no less than what Hitler did.” READ MORE
