Erdoğan at COP31: Gaza suffered “genocide and ecocide” – Israel’s Foreign Ministry replies with a “campaign of lies”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the platform of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya to turn again on Israel. In his speech at the opening of the leaders’ summit on Wednesday, November 11, the Turkish president said that in Gaza there had been not only genocide but also “ecocide”. Israel’s Foreign Ministry replied a few hours later, speaking of a “campaign of lies”.

Erdoğan, hosting a COP summit in Turkey for the first time, devoted most of his speech to decarbonising the Turkish economy, climate finance and the voice of the Pacific island states. When he reached armed conflicts, he said nature pays the bill too and that the most characteristic example is Gaza.

“Genocide and ecocide”

In the text of the speech published by the Turkish Presidency, Erdoğan recalls that he had used the same term at the UN General Assembly. “Centuries-old olive trees were cut down in Gaza. Today we planted an olive tree,” he said, referring to the sapling he planted with UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the conference site, for Turkey’s National Tree Planting Day. He added that in Gaza the soil and water were polluted and the cities became “huge heaps of ruins”.

The Turkish president dwelt on the floods of recent days, which inundated tens of thousands of tents. “We want to send containers, but they do not let us,” he said, and asked: “Are they not human beings?” He called the show of power on the backs of Gaza’s children “weakness” and a “lack of conscience” and demanded that humanitarian aid be allowed through immediately and the policy of blockade ended. “No one who sees this image, shameful for humanity, can escape responsibility,” he stressed.

Jerusalem’s reply

Israel’s Foreign Ministry replied with a post on X calling Erdoğan a “dictator” who is again using an international platform for his “anti-Israel campaign of lies”. According to the Israeli ministry, Hamas is responsible for the destruction in Gaza, and its leaders are hosted in Turkey. It adds that Hamas started the war with the massacre of October 7 and built its military infrastructure in residential areas. “Those who truly care about Gaza should call on Hamas to disarm so that reconstruction can begin,” the post concludes.

These are the two sides’ own claims, which we report as stated. Relations between the two countries remain tense over Gaza, where Israel has said “no” to Turkish participation in the multinational force. This is not the first time Israel’s Foreign Ministry has answered the Turkish president in such harsh terms: in an earlier post it also referred to the Turkish occupation of Cyprus.

COP31 is being held at the Antalya EXPO site from November 9 to 20. In the same speech, Erdoğan presented the BRIDGE initiative for financing local investments and called on leaders to say “enough” to the “greedy mentality” that sacrifices ecology for the economy.