Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan launched one of the harshest verbal attacks yet against Israel on Thursday night, telling CNN Türk that Israel has become "a problem for the entire international community" and that "Israeli authorities have become a burden humanity can no longer bear."
Fidan called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel, declaring that "no matter which way you look at it, there is no parameter to continue to bear these people." He went further, saying, "These people have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear. With these policies and this mindset, humanity cannot carry this burden. The human conscience cannot bear it. Political systems cannot sustain it, and economic systems cannot sustain it." He called on "everyone" to "step forward, take a diplomatic position, and impose the necessary sanctions" on Israel.
The Turkish foreign minister also touted his country's economic pressure campaign, noting that Turkey was the first country to halt trade with Israel over the war in Gaza, and that Erdogan stopped ten billion dollars in trade with Israel overnight. He argued that anti-Israel sentiment has spread from university campuses to newspapers and intellectual platforms because Israel is openly carrying out massacres, adding that Israel can no longer conceal this through media tools. He accused Jerusalem of searching for a new enemy to change its international image.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar responded swiftly and sharply, writing on X that Fidan's "sickening words are textbook incitement to genocide." Sa'ar added, "Dehumanizing the Jewish people as an 'unbearable burden' is the classic, horrific language of history's worst eliminationist regimes. The civilized world and Turkey's NATO allies must unequivocally condemn this explicit call for the erasure of Israel."
The exchange lands amid a sharp deterioration in Ankara-Jerusalem relations following Israel's decision on Sunday to formally recognize the Armenian genocide, a move that infuriated the Turkish government. Erdogan responded earlier in the week by saying he does not take seriously "slanders" against Turkey from what he called a "murder network whose hands are stained with the blood of 75,000 innocent Gazans, most of them women and children." Speaking after a Cabinet meeting in Ankara, Erdogan insisted Turkey's history includes no oppression, massacres, colonialism or genocide, pointing instead to what he framed as Turkish mercy toward refugees fleeing the Inquisition and Nazi persecution.
Relations between the two countries, once close regional partners, have been in freefall since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza, with Erdogan emerging as one of Israel's most vocal critics on the world stage. Thursday's remarks add to a string of escalations from Ankara in recent months, including threats from Erdogan himself and a Turkish claim by the interior minister that Turkey will one day reclaim control over Jerusalem.
Sa'ar's office has framed the exchange as part of a broader pattern in which Turkish officials have moved from criticism of Israeli policy toward rhetoric that erases the distinction between the Israeli government and the Jewish people as a whole, language Jerusalem says crosses from political disagreement into incitement.
