Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to party like its 1899.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday implied that Jerusalem belongs to Turkey, referring to the Ottoman Empire’s control over the city for much of the modern era.
“In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us,” he told Turkish lawmakers during a major policy speech in Ankara.
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The Palestinian people have been living in Jerusalem “for thousands of years,” but they were occupied and had their rights violated, the Turkish leader went on.
If, as Erdogan claims, the Palestinian people have been living in Jerusalem “for thousands of years,” but they were occupied, doesn’t that make the Turks occupiers?
Why weren’t these “thousands-years-old” palestinians demanding their own state, free of this occupation?
Both rhetorical questions, of course.
Incidentally, if he thinks “In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War”, that was nothing compared to the tears we shed almost two thousand years earlier when our second Temple was destroyed and we had to leave it.
