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Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has accused his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, of dehumanizing the Jewish people and inciting genocide over remarks Fidan made about Israel in a television interview.<\/p>\n
Saar posted a video on X late on Thursday with an English translation of an interview Fidan gave to the CNN T\u00fcrk broadcaster, in which the Turkish foreign minister said Israel’s politics and mindset had “become a burden that humanity can no longer bear.”<\/p>\n
According to the translation, Fidan also described Israel as one of “humanity’s common problems” and called for international pressure on the country.<\/p>\n
In his post on X, Saar described the remarks as “nauseating” and said they “constitute clear incitement to genocide.”<\/p>\n
“Dehumanization of the Jewish people and portraying them as an ‘unbearable burden’ is the classic language of history’s greatest tyrants,” Saar wrote.<\/p>\n
He called on the “enlightened world” and Turkey’s NATO allies to “unequivocally condemn this explicit call for Israel’s destruction.”<\/p>\n
Fidan’s remarks were prompted by Israel’s formal recognition of the Armenian genocide.<\/p>\n
According to historical research, around 1.5 million Armenians were killed in 1915 and 1916 during World War I as a result of systematic mass killings in the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n
Turkey, the successor state to the empire, rejects the term genocide, arguing instead that between 300,000 and 500,000 people died in wartime violence and unrest.<\/p>\n
The Turkish government described Israel’s recognition as a political act of retaliation and a diversionary tactic.<\/p>\n
President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan said that Israel was attempting to “cover up its own crimes” and to smear Turkey with slander, according to the state news agency Anadolu.<\/p>\n