Erdogan: Gaza is Palestinian land, US must accept that 

The besieged Gaza Strip is Palestinian land, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday, adding that the United States must accept this and pressure Israel to stop its aggression against the enclave.

Speaking to reporters on board his presidential plane while returning from a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders in the Saudi capital Riyadh, the Turkish president said: “We cannot agree with Biden if he approaches [Israel’s bombing] by seeing Gaza as the land of occupying settlers or Israel, rather than the land of the Palestinian people.”

“We have seen once again how the United Nations and other international organisations become dysfunctional and blind when the dead are Muslims,” he added, stressing the need to “modernise the structure that emerged after World War II, and the system of permanent membership and veto power in the United Nations should be changed.”

“The future of the world and peoples’ lives cannot be left at the mercy of five countries that have veto power,” he stressed, referring to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the US, Russia, China, the UK and France.

He also criticised the demand to characterise Hamas as a terrorist organisation, stressing that the movement is not a terrorist organisation, but rather “people who struggle to protect their land and fight for their homeland.”

The Turkish President called on the international community to take concrete measures to stop the massacres in the Gaza Strip and criticised the UN Security Council as once again being “powerless”.

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