Turkey asked Israel’s consul-general in Istanbul Yossi Levi Safri to leave the country on Tuesday night following Israel’s Monday massacre against Palestinian marchers on the Gaza border.
The move is a further volley in a round of diplomat expulsions that has seen many countries kick out Israel’s ambassadors as relations soured over brutal killings by the Israeli military on the Gaza Strip border.
An increasingly acerbic war of words has flared between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after dozens of Palestinians were killed during confrontations with Israeli occupation forces on the Gaza border.
Sometime earlier Turkey recalled its ambassadors to Israel and the US for consultations on the situation.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 60 Palestinians were killed and more than 2700 more injured in Monday’s brutality by the Israeli army.
Ankara reacted with fury to the aggression which came on the same day the United States formally moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem in defiance of international criticism.
Slamming the Israeli response Erdoğan said Monday that Israel is “a terror state” that has committed “a genocide.”
Netanyahu hit back a day later saying that as a prime supporter of Palestinian resistance the Turkish leader was himself involved in “terrorism and slaughter.”
Erdoğan on his personal Twitter account retorted that “Netanyahu is the PM of an apartheid state that has occupied a defenseless people’s lands for 60+ yrs in violation of UN resolutions. He has the blood of Palestinians on his hands and can’t cover up crimes by attacking Turkey.”
The Turkish president added “Want a lesson in humanity? Read the 10 commandments.”
