Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan said Israel “should give some thought to what it
would be like to lose a friend like Turkey in the future,” in an
interview with the Euronews channel.
“We
have important ongoing agreements between us. How can these
agreements be kept going in this climate of mistrust? I think Israel
had better take another look at its relations with its neighbours if
it believes it is a world power,” Erdoğan said in the interview on
Saturday.
The
Turkish premier said that the humiliation of Turkish
Ambassador to Israel Oguz Celikkol
by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had “no place in
international politics.”
Earlier
in January, Aylaon called Celikkol in for a public dressing down over
a Turkish television show that depicted Mossad agents as baby
snatchers. At that meeting Ayalon instructed the camera crews, in
Hebrew and in the ambassador's presence, not to film them shaking
hands, to show that the Turkish envoy was sitting on a lower sofa, to
show that there was only an Israeli flag on the table, and not to
film them smiling.
Erdoğan also criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for saying that he
trusted French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and not Erdogan, to serve
as an unbiased mediator in peace talks with Syria. “This is
diplomatic inexperience, too,” Erdogan said of the prime minister's
statement, “Because when you say this… How can I trust you if you
say you don’t trust me?”
When asked by Euronews if Turkey could have handled relations with
Israel more diplomatically, Ergodan answered that “I am telling the
truth…And I will keep telling the truth.”
The Turkish premier reiterated allegations against Israel over
Operation Cast Lead and the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
“When innocent civilians are ruthlessly killed, struck by
phosphorus bombs, infrastructure is demolished in bombing and people
are forced to live in an open-air prison… we can not see this as
compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, simply
human rights, and we can not close our eyes to all this happening,” Erdoğan said.