VOA News | Monday, March 11, 2024 
Turkey’s Erdogan says Netanyahu worse than Hitler, Israel running ‘Nazi camps’

Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was worse than Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during a speech he gave at an event in Ankara on Wednesday, drawing charges that he himself was guilty of genocide. The barbed exchange was a return to form for the two leaders, whose long history of public attacks on each other has ebbed and flowed alongside Israel and Turkey’s on-again, off-again alliance. The attacks had halted in the last year or two as Jerusalem and Ankara rekindled their relationship, but the détente has seemingly fallen apart over the Israel-Hamas war. During an opening speech at an award ceremony in the Turkish capital, Erdogan said the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust was not as bad as Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, and likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Strip to that of Jews rounded up in concentration and death camps. “We’ve seen the Nazi camps of Israel. How does this happen? They used to talk about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler?” he asked of Israel. “This is even worse than Hitler,” he added to raucous applause. “What Netanyahu is doing is no less than what Hitler did.” “Hitler was not as rich as [Netanyahu] is,” Erdogan continued after a short pause. “He is richer than Hitler. He takes support from the West, he receives all kinds of support from the US, and with all that support, 20,000 Gazans have been killed.” Turkish President Erdogan on Israeli aggression...Read more