Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his rhetoric against Israel and the United States on Wednesday.
Speaking at the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul (OIC), Erdogan said the United States role as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, he said, “is over.”
He called President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel a “wrong decision” with “no value,” adding that the move had betrayed President Donald Trump’s “Zionist mentality.”
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas echoed the statement, urging the nations of the world to reverse their recognition of Israel in response to what Muslim extremists have begun to refer to as the “Trump Declaration.”
“We call on world nations to reconsider their recognition of Israel over its conduct toward Palestinians and its dismissal of decisions by the international community with the backing of the United States,” Abbas told the emergency summit, gathered in Istanbul.
Abbas also reiterated his long-standing demand that the world officially recognize the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign nation within the 1949 Armistice Lines, also called the 1967 borders.
“We here rise up to state together and in a clear unambiguous manner that Al Quds (Jerusalem) has been, will be eternally the capital of the state of Palestine,” he said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appeared to succeed in joining forces with Erdogan and Abbas, telling the summit that Israel was responsible for “planting seeds of tension” in the region. Rouhani focused his efforts on unifying the Arab world together with Iran against Israel and the United States.
Erdogan called on world powers to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of “Palestine,” saying President Trump should reverse his decision.
Jerusalem is “a red line” for “the Muslim world,” Erdogan said, and urged leaders of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation following the week’s Islamic Summit Conference to continue their “resolute stance” over the holy city.
The Istanbul summit, he said, shows the world that “Jerusalem has not been abandoned.”
In its final communique, the OIC said it will take the “Jerusalem issue” to the United Nations General Assembly if the UN Security Council “fails to take action” and called on the world to recognize “East Jerusalem” as the “occupied capital of the state of Palestine.”
Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, the head of the Israel-based Arab committee called the planned move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem – an event that will take years to implement – an “attack” on the Muslim world.
