Erdogan Declares Three-day Mourning In Solidarity With Gaza: Turkey Expels Israeli Envoy Over Gaza Border Massacre

Erdogan Declares Three-day Mourning In Solidarity With Gaza: Turkey Expels Israeli Envoy Over Gaza Border Massacre

16 May 2018

Pic And Various Agencies

Turkish president Recep Erdogan has declared three days of mourning and called for a mass demonstration in Istanbul next Friday to protest the death of 58 Gazans by Israeli forces on Monday during border rallies against the relocation of the US embassy to Occupied Jerusalem.

"On Friday afternoon, we are going to have our mass gathering in Yenikapi Square. And in order to show our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we are going to hold rallies in Diyarbakir on Sunday," Erdogan said while attending an event with students in London during his three-day visit to Britain.

"As the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), we are going to hold aid campaigns during the month of Ramadan for our brothers and sisters in Palestine,'' he added.

Earlier, the Turkish president accused Israel of "state terror" and "genocide" after Israeli forces killed at least 58 Palestinians on the Gaza border and injured around 2700.

Irish gov't summons Israeli ambassador to voice anger over Gaza events

Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said his government is "profoundly shocked" at the death toll and scale of injuries that have been inflicted by Israeli forces on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza.

Addressing the parliament on Tuesday, Varadkar said his deputy Simon Coveney, who is also serving as a foreign minister, summoned the Israeli ambassador to Iveagh House (the headquarters of the foreign ministry in Dublin) this morning to express the government's and the Irish people's outrage and dismay at these events.

The premier said Coveney directly requested that there is a need for an independent international investigation into what has happened, as the UN secretary general has called for.

He said the use of force must be proportionate to the real threat and these protests may not have been 100 percent peaceful, but there is no indication that the scale of the threat could have justified such violence and so many deaths."

He said live ammunition should not be used for crowd control and the government supports the UN security council's call for an independent investigation.

For his part, senior official of the Sinn Fein party Pearse Doherty spoke of the "terrible atrocity" where live ammunition was used against unarmed Palestinians in Gaza.

Doherty said that without adequate diplomatic response more innocent civilians would be killed in the coming days.

He said that Coveney should have told the Israeli ambassador to "pack his bags."

Turkey expels Israeli envoy over Gaza border massacre

Turkey on Tuesday expelled the Israeli ambassador in protest against Israel's killing of dozens of unarmed Palestinians along Gaza border.

The Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli Ambassador Eitan Naeh and told him it would be "appropriate" for him to return to his country "for a while."

Along the same line, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having the "blood of Palestinians on his hands" following indiscriminate killings by Israeli forces in the besieged Gaza Strip.

"Netanyahu is the PM of an apartheid state that has occupied a defenseless people's lands for 60+ yrs in violation of UN resolutions," Erdogan tweeted.

Thousands of Palestinians have gathered on Gaza Strip's eastern border since Monday morning to take part in protests aimed to commemorate the Nakba anniversary and protest relocating of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Since the border rallies began on March 30, more than 60 Palestinian demonstrators have been martyred by cross-border Israeli gunfire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

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