ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday brushed aside a move by Israel’s Cabinet to label the Ottoman Empire’s mass killing of Armenians during World War I as genocide, instead directing accusations back at Israel over Palestinian deaths in Gaza.
Erdogan’s remarks came in response to a measure the Israeli Cabinet approved on Sunday. The proposal has not yet received a full parliamentary vote and arrives at a time when relations between Israel and Turkey have been steadily deteriorating.
Turkey has long and aggressively worked to stop other nations from officially classifying the large-scale deaths of Armenians around 1915 as genocide, even as Armenians have continued to push for that recognition.
Historians put the death toll at up to 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I — an event that many scholars consider the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey disputes that characterization, arguing the death toll has been exaggerated and that those who died were casualties of civil war and widespread unrest.
Speaking during a televised address following a Turkish Cabinet meeting, Erdogan said: “We pay absolutely no attention to the slanders against our country by this criminal network, which has the blood of 73,000 innocent people of Gaza, mostly children and women, on its hands.”
“Our history is free from genocide, massacres, oppression, and colonialism,” Erdogan added.
For years, Israel held back from officially recognizing the violence as genocide partly to avoid straining its relationship with Turkey. However, that relationship has grown increasingly tense over the past two decades, particularly as conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran have continued.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who put forward the proposal, stated on Sunday that the “Armenian Genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization” by the Turkish government, despite what he described as overwhelming historical evidence.
Saar also noted that Israeli leaders — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have previously referred to the violence against Armenians as a genocide, though Israel’s Knesset has never formally voted to recognize it as such.
He pointed out that 32 countries, among them the United States, Syria, and Lebanon, have already classified the killings as genocide.
On Sunday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry characterized Israel’s move as “politically motivated,” accusing Israel of using it to draw attention away from its own conduct toward Palestinians and from proceedings at the International Court of Justice over alleged genocide in Gaza.
Once considered close allies, Israel and Turkey saw their relationship begin to unravel after Erdogan — whose political party has roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement — rose to power. His vocal criticism of Israeli policies toward Palestinians contributed to the ongoing rift between the two nations.
Israel has faced repeated accusations from multiple parties, including the United Nations and Turkey, that its military campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide. Israel, a nation founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has denied those accusations.
