Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip has entered its seventh day and so far at least 153 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 42 children, and dozens are wounded. Israel has reported 10 dead, including two children.
In a statement early on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged the world to take action against the Israeli attacks. However, Turkey’s relations with Israel are not properly reflected in the media’s portrayal, said Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları.
“Neither the Arab Union nor the Arab states are fulfilling their duties against the attacks. Turkey is the same; Turkey has strategic relations with Israel. Since the establishment of the Israeli state, Turkey has had close relations with it and has been one of the subsidiaries of the imperialist powers,” she said.
She recalled Israel’s Mavi Marmara raid on six civilian ships belonging to the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” in 2010. Ten Turkish activists lost their lives during the raid. She said that what happened afterwards shows the real face of the government in Turkey.
“After what happened in the Mavi Marmara, the resistance in Gaza was forgotten in Turkey and the AKP government accepted 20 million dollars in blood money [compensation] from Israel,” she claimed.
“The mentality that accepted 20 million dollars can never be in solidarity with Palestine. Therefore, they are not sincere about this issue, they use the Palestinian cause for domestic policies.”
