Turkey FM calls Netanyahu ‘baby killer,’ likens him to PKK amid war of words

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has likened the Israeli premier to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, which Ankara views as terrorists, saying Benjamin Netanyahu is a “baby killer,” who sought, in vain, to partition Syria using the Kurdish militants there.

Speaking at a press conference with his Tunisian counterpart, Khemaies Jhinaoui, in Tunisia, on Monday, Cavusoglu censured Netanyahu for showing sympathy for the Kurdish militants.

The comments come amid a heightened war of words between Netanyahu and Turkish authorities, particularly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Cavusoglu was responding to Netanyahu’s accusation that the Turkish army, under Erdogan’s watch, “massacres women and children in Kurdish villages” in a reference to Ankara’s military operations against the Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey as well as in northern Syria.

“Netanyahu is worried because he discovered too late that he can’t divide Syria,” Cavusoglu said, adding, Netanyahu planned to achieve this goal “with the help of the terrorists” from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian offshoot of the PKK.

“Netanyahu and the PKK have something else in common — they are both baby killers,” he added.

The war of words began on Saturday, when Erdogan said that “Jews in Israel” beat defenseless Palestinian womrn and children, and criticized the regime's occupation of Palestine.

Netanyahu responded by calling Erdogan an “anti-Semitic dictator,” whose army “massacres women and children in Kurdish villages.”

Erdogan fired back again, saying Netanyahu is the “voice of oppressors” and is “waging state terrorism.”

“Netanyahu is the voice of the oppressor. You commit state terror. You kick women, children; you kick babies and drag them away with your soldiers and your police. Netanyahu you are an oppressor, a tyrant, and you are at the head of state terror,” Erdogan said.

In a tweet on Sunday, Cavusoglu also labeled Netanyahu “a cold-blooded killer of modern times” and held him “responsible for massacres of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”

PressTV-Turkish, Israeli leaders trade heated barbs

Turkey and Israel exchange new broadsides, with Ankara blasting Israel's occupation and Tel Aviv accusing Turkey of massacring Kurds and occupying Cyprus.

Over the past two years, Turkey has conducted an operation against Kurdish militants in parts of northern Syria that lie west of the Euphrates River. It is now preparing for a similar campaign east of the river.

The planned operation, however, was delayed last week following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a US withdrawal from Syria.

Relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv soured in 2010 after an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla killed 10 Turkish activists in high seas.

Six years later, they reached an agreement to normalize their ties.

Their relations, however, sank to a fresh low in May 2018 after the two sides expelled each other's envoys amid growing tensions over the Israeli killing of dozens of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

At the time, Erdogan defended the Hamas resistance movement and slammed Israel’s decades-long crimes against the Palestinian people, saying Netanyahu had the blood of Palestinians on his hands.

Netanyahu hit back, saying, “A man whose hands are stained with the blood of countless Kurdish citizens in Turkey and Syria is the last person to preach to us about combat ethics.”

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