Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent much of his address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) castigating Israel for its handling of the Gaza War without a word of condemnation for the terrorists who launched the conflict.
Erdogan began his speech by complaining about Israel’s reluctance to create a Palestinian state and about the U.S. refusing to grant Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — now enjoying the 17th year of the four-year term he was elected to in 2005 — an entry visa to attend the UNGA.
“This injustice against our Palestinian brothers and sisters deeply offends the conscience of humanity,” Erdogan declared. “Let it be known that although President Abbas is unable to be with us here in person, we will as we did last year, continue to be the voice of a free and sovereign state of Palestine.”
The Turkish leader called on “all countries who have not yet recognized the State of Palestine to reconsider their position.”
Much of Erdogan’s speech was devoted to accusing Israel of terrorism and genocide for its conduct in the Gaza War. He did not once mention Hamas, which started the war with a savage attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, although he made a vague and approving reference to the “Palestinian Resistance.”
It should also be noted that Erdogan resolutely refuses to acknowledge his own country’s genocide of the Armenians — an actual genocide that resulted in a very notably diminished population of its victims. An estimated 1.5 million of the total Ottoman empire population of 2 million Armenians were killed in the Turkish genocide.
“Over the past three years, we have lost 74,000 of our brothers and sisters, most of them women and children,” Erdogan said. “Mind you, we lost them to what we regard as acts of state terror by Israel.”
“The people of Gaza are still searching for their loved ones beneath the rubble. They are recovering the bodies of their spouses, their children or parents, innocent children who have lost their arms and legs in Israeli attacks are trying to return to school,” he said.
Erdogan said Gaza “has become the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time,” and while he praised President Donald Trump’s efforts, along with his own, to negotiate a cease fire, he accused Israel of refusing to “stop the occupation.”
“We are faced with a genocidal mindset that can never get enough of killing,” he said, again referring solely to Israel, and not the terrorist rape and murder squads who actually started the war.
“Children in Gaza must be safe. When Palestinian children look up at the sky, they will see kites flying freely, not fighter jets, UAVs, or drones. Children in Lebanon will not wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of bombings,” he said, again without mentioning Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored terrorist group that launched the current conflict in Lebanon by attacking Israel with ballistic missiles.
Erdogan also omitted his own country’s multiple invasions of Syria to attack the Kurds while he praised Turkey for its high-minded “principles” without addressing his own government’s ugly authoritarian streak, which includes the ruthless suppression of political opposition and media. He did take a moment to celebrate the downfall of dictator Bashar Assad in Syria and pledged his support for the current government, headed by former al-Qaeda lieutenant Ahmed al-Sharaa.
In Erdogan’s view, Turkey was a busy peacemaker, supporter of multilateralism, and staunch ally of Europe and NATO. He warned the Europeans not to consider booting Turkey out of NATO, arguing “a Europe that excludes Turkey from its security architecture cannot possibly be stronger or safer.”
Erdogan talked at length about the “climate crisis” as a warm-up to his pitch for naming Turkey’s former food and livestock commissioner, Mehmet Mehdi Eker, as director of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Erdogan warned against “Islamophobia,” which he said was “spreading like a plague in the West.”
“In particular, Muslim women and girls have been subjected to greater discrimination in recent years,” he said. “We regard the headscarf [ban] introduced in schools by certain countries as an attack on women’s most fundamental rights.”
Austria, for example, banned Islamic headscarves in schools in November 2025, although Erdogan might have been more upset about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni discussing a headscarf ban this week.
“Rising xenophobia, cultural racism, and anti-Semitism are also toxic trends that must be combated with determination,” he added.
Erdogan concluded by talking about “artificial intelligence, which has become increasingly difficult to control.”
“It is long overdue now to establish a common international legal framework for AI. It is crucial to accelerate the work, which is already being carried out, to draft and bring into force the U.N. International Convention on Artificial Intelligence,” he said.
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