President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday slammed Western governments for defending Israel during its attacks on Gaza "at the cost of their own reputation." "Western countries, which have been lecturing us about democracy in our universities for years, have failed this test," he said. Erdogan at the opening ceremony of the academic year at higher education institutions in the capital Ankara.
He accused Western countries of "failing" to prevent genocide in Gaza, saying they had lost their authority to protect Israel.
“The Gaza genocide showed that the Zionist lobby has taken control of the most prestigious universities in the world,” Erdogan said
Erdogan also deplored the corporate and sometimes physical punishment that students, especially at US universities, face for supporting Palestine.
Over the past year, the scale of killing and destruction in the Gaza Strip has sparked the largest global demonstrations in years, including at US colleges such as Columbia University, UCLA, Harvard and Yale, where pro-Palestinian protests took place on campus for weeks. camps demanding that institutions stop collaborating with companies that support the war.
However, the law enforcement response was brutal, with riot police storming the camps, tearing down barricades and tents, using tear gas and stun grenades to dismantle the camps, and making indiscriminate arrests.
Many teachers were fired for their active support of Palestine, and dozens of students were threatened with expulsion or “lifelong unemployment.”
Turkish universities have also expressed solidarity with colleges around the world this year.
Since the beginning of the war, Türkiye has been a vocal critic of Israel and has been a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause, including negotiating with representatives of Palestine, Israel and Hamas.
Erdogan has repeatedly called Israel a "terrorist state", accused it of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the "butcher of Gaza" and compared him to the head of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.
He frequently criticizes the failure of the international system to stop the conflict in Gaza and now Lebanon. He also says he is sad to see Muslim countries not taking a more proactive stance towards Israel, calling on them to take economic, diplomatic and political measures to pressure Tel Aviv into agreeing to a ceasefire. In addition to providing humanitarian assistance and ending trade with Israel, Erdogan's government sought to unite international organizations, including the United Nations, NATO and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to contain Israel and encourage cooperation between Palestinian factions, most notably between Hamas and Fatah. The first anniversary of the brutal Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. It began on October 7 following the Hamas invasion of southern Israel and has since spread to Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East. In the past year alone, Israeli bombing has killed some 42,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, and more than 700 in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. The Israeli offensive has displaced almost the entire population of Gaza due to a blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine. Attempts by the US, Egypt and Qatar to broker a ceasefire and organize a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas failed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to stop the offensive. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its actions in the Gaza Strip. The escalation of the conflict in Lebanon follows a landmark ruling in July the decision of the International Court of Justice, which declared Israel's long-term occupation of Palestinian lands illegal and demanded the evacuation of all illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
