News - Middle East: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the “terrorist” Israeli regime will “set sights” on Turkey and will eventually target Anatolia if it manages to defeat the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking at a parliamentary group meeting in the capital Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan warned that the occupying regime would not stop in the besieged Palestinian territory and would set his country as its next target.

“Do not think that Israel will stop in Gaza.  Unless it's stopped... this rogue and terrorist” regime “will set its sights on Anatolia sooner or later," the Turkish leader, who is a vocal critic of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, told his party lawmakers.

By Anatolia, Erdogan was referring to the large Turkish peninsula - also called Asia Minor - that comprises more than half of Turkey’s territory.

“We will continue to stand by Hamas, which fights for the independence of its own land and which defends Anatolia,” Erdogan stressed, whose country’s relations with Israel were strained following the current war after the pair had managed to restore diplomatic ties last August after a decade of tensions.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Turkish leader condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin for his crimes in Gaza, stressing, “Netanyahu and those complicit in genocide will be held accountable for every drop of blood they have shed.”

“On Nakba, the Day of Catastrophe, we once again declare with all our being and resources that we stand by Palestine and the Palestinian cause,” Erdogan said, adding, “We (Turkey) will also ensure that the perpetrators of genocide face justice.”

May 15 is marked around the world as the day of “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”. The day refers to the large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and their mass exodus, courtesy of the apartheid Israeli regime and its Western backers.

More than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their ancestral homes in Palestine and 500 villages and towns were destroyed by Zionist militias before the Israeli regime declared its illegal establishment in 1948. Palestinians are still enduring the repercussions of this catastrophe to this day.

Israel has killed more than 35,170 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since that October day. 

Source: Press TV