Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks at a ceremony organized by the Council of Higher Education at Beştepe National Congress and Culture Center on October 9, 2023 in Ankara, Turkey. (Yavuz Ozden/ dia images via Getty Images)

(JTA) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised Hamas and canceled a trip to Israel as it fights a war with the terror group in Gaza.

“Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, mujahideen waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” Erdogan said Wednesday in remarks to his ruling AK Party, as translated by Reuters. “Mujahideen,” an Arabic term, means “holy warrior.”

Erdogan said calling Hamas a terrorist group is a policy of the West. “We aren’t indebted to Israel,” he said. “But the West is.”

Turkey condemned Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, in which terrorists killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, wounded thousands and abducted more than 200.

Israel subsequently declared war and has launched airstrikes on Gaza, killing more than 5,000, including a large number of children, according to the territory’s Hamas-controlled health ministry. It is not clear how many of those killed in Gaza are terrorists.

Erdogan’s statement Wednesday is an example of how the war’s ripple effects across the Middle East. Before Oct. 7, Turkey was reconciling with Israel after more than a decade of tensions that were sparked in 2010 by a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish flotilla attempting to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza.  Then, as now, the territory was under Hamas control.

Turkish-Israeli ties began warming again after the 2020 Abraham Accords. The treaty normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries, boosted regional commerce and left Iran increasingly isolated. The Biden Administration encouraged Turkish-Israeli reconciliation, seeing it as a key piece of further isolating Iran, and its ally Russia, which invaded Ukraine.

Turkey is a member of the NATO military alliance, and Biden is rushing defense assistance and U.S. military personnel to the Middle East to deter an expansion of the war. Erdogan’s hostility toward Israel could complicate aspects of that effort.

The Israel-Hamas war has also led to the suspension of U.S.-led negotiations over an Israel-Saudi Arabia treaty, another diplomatic process that grew out of the Abraham Accords.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Make a Passover Gift Today!

$90 $180

$360

Other amount