Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Daily Sabah, which is close to the government of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, reports that the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued arrest warrants for 37 Israeli officials on charges of genocide.
The move comes amid jockeying between Turkiye and Israel over the Turkish proposal to send Turkish peacekeepers to Gaza. The Israeli government rejects a Turkish force in Gaza, seeing the Erdogan government as inimical to Israel. Erdogan sometimes may have Trump’s ear on the matter, however.
The office pointed to the killing and wounding of thousands of people and the deprivation of the populace of shelter and building infrastructure. The prosecutor’s office also instanced Israeli destruction of hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
The indictment document concluded that the State of Israel has been systematically committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
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The Israeli government spokesman dismissed the indictment as a “PR stunt.”
The principle of universal jurisdiction over war crimes has, however, been widely claimed by judges. In 1998, Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón indicted former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet for the human rights violations he committed in Chile. He was arrested in London six days. London authorities arrested him 6 days later when he traveled to that country. He was allowed to return to Chile for health reasons, but was tried there, dying before a verdict could be pronounced. There is no reason Turkiye’s magistrates cannot exercise universal jurisdiction, just as Garzón and his British colleagues did.
Reuters reports at the same time that Biden administration officials became aware in 2024 of Israeli government lawyers’ fears that Israeli forces were committing war crimes in Gaza. Despite blithe denials, then, even the more clear-eyed figures in the Israeli government bureaucracy could see clearly the crimes the Israeli military was committing.
The complaint in Turkiye was brought by the Istanbul Bar Association. It named Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu along with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, along with military figures such as Chief of General Staff Eyal Zamir and Navy Commander David Saar Salama. Salama was indicted because the complaint includes Israel’s illegal interception in international waters of the 50-ship Sumud Aid Flotilla on October 2, convening United Nations Convention on Maritime Law as well as Turkish law. Salama was charged with kidnapping the Flotilla volunteers and with torturing them.
Photo by Salah Darwish on Unsplash
Istanbul Bar Association Chair Yasin Şamlı, who brought the complaint, pointed to the hundreds of rounds fired at 5-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza, who had called for help. Israeli forces fired on the ambulance coming to her aid and then riddled the car she was in with bullets. The Daily Sabah quoted Şamlı: “This act shows the world that Israel is committing an open genocide. Israel kills children out of fear. There is no innocent person that Israel would refrain from attacking. Israel is a threat to all humanity.”
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The Bar Association Chair also pointed to what he called an Israeli infrastructure of terror, involving repeated airstrikes on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Tunisia, Qatar, Iraq, Malta, Egypt and Iran. .
Articles 76 and 77 of the Turkish penal code specify genocide as a crime:
Genocide
Article 76
(1) The commission of any of the following acts against any member of any national, ethnic, racial, or religious group with the intent to destroy such group, in whole or in part, through the execution of a plan shall constitute Genocide:
a) Intentional killing;
b) Causing serious physical, or mental, harm to persons;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transporting children of the group to another group.
(2) Any person who commits genocide shall be sentenced to a penalty of aggravated life imprisonment. However, where the offences of intentional killing and intentional injury are committed in the course of genocide, there shall be an actual aggregation of such offences, in accordance with the number of victims identified.
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