Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that his country would completely cut economic relations with Israel, blocking Israeli ships from docking at Turkish ports and denying Israeli aircraft that might be carrying weapons overflight rights over Türkiye. The latter step imposes extra costs on Israeli cargo flights, which will have to go around Turkey on flights to Moscow, for instance, as well as to Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Ships docking at Turkish ports must provide legal paperwork certifying that they are not carrying Israeli goods. The ban on Israeli overflights does not extend to passenger jets.
Turkish Minute notes that although President Erdogan announced an economic break with Israel in May, 2024, it has been largely ineffective. It has been bypassed by third parties, and ships carrying Azerbaijani petroleum to Israel have continued this trade, often turning off their transponders once they leave Ceyhoun Port. Orally demanding that ship captains certify that they don’t have Israeli goods aboard is a little unlikely to be effective. The demand is, at least, an attempt to tighten up the boycott of Israel, and comes after repeated activist protests at the country’s ports about the gaps in the application of this sanction.
The Turkish populace is furious about Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza, and Turkish television — unlike Israeli or American TV — reports daily and in detail from Gaza. (See e.g. TRT World, “Israel blocks the entry of essential hygiene items into Gaza.” ) The government is therefore under pressure to do more than pay lip service to condemning Tel Aviv.
At the same time, Türkiye’s parliament passed a resolution Friday declaring that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
MENA-FN reports that the resolution
- “stated that Israel’s decades-long policies of occupation, destruction, and annexation have escalated into genocide over the past two years.”
The resolution declared that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately starving the civilian population.
MENA-FN continues,
- “According to the motion, Israel’s expanded military operations have intensified massacres and oppression, resulting in nearly 70,000 deaths -— mostly women and children—over 150,000 injuries, and widespread destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The resolution further accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration of seeking to annex all Palestinian territories, including Gaza.”
According to Turkish Minute, the extraordinary summer session was called “at the request of all seven political parties represented in the assembly, comprising the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), the New Path group, the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP), the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), the Labor Party (EMEP) and the Democrat Party.”
“Grand National Assembly,” Digital, Dall-E, 2025
Many of the parliamentarians wore patterned Palestinian scarves or keffiyehs, to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people. All 442 members of parliament voted for the resolution, so that it passed unanimously. The body then went back into recess until October 1.
The move come days after Netanyahu declared that he accepted that the Ottoman Empire carried out a genocide against the Armenians in 1915-1917. While this genocide, which predated the foundation of the modern Turkish state, is well documented by historians, Turkish nationalism disallows its recognition. The Israeli move provoked further widespread anger against Israel in the Turkish press.
As propaganda, the Israeli move seems self-defeating, since Israel’s current Gaza genocide cannot be excused by the actions of people like Cemal and Talat Pashas over a century ago. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Moreover, the Ottomans were not signatories to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions, which did not exist yet. Israel is. The Ottomans shouldn’t have needed a convention to avoid harming so many civilians, of course, but as a matter of international law, Israel is the one in the hot seat today.
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