Turkish PM urges Turkey’s Jews to take action

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

AA photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on the Jewish community in Turkey to get involved in cease-fire diplomacy, implying that they can make contact with Israel to bring a halt to the air strikes in Gaza.

“They are people who can become a part of this [cease-fire] mechanism,” Erdoğan said, adding that the Jewish community in Turkey totaled between 20,000 and 30,000 people.

“They have connections there [in Israel] and they should make use of these connections, because they know very well about the position we are in right now,” Erdoğan said yesterday.

He revealed that Turkish and Israeli intelligence authorities had recently contacted each other over the Gaza crisis, but said that Ankara had not been in direct political dialogue with Israel. “We have not conducted any meetings with Israel in the political sense, and we will not do so throughout this process unless an exceptional situation appears,” he said.

Although the intelligence services of both Israel and Turkey were working on the issue, it is not possible for such organizations to end such a process, Erdoğan noted.

MİT chief in Cairo

National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief Hakan Fidan and Deputy Chairman of Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ömer Çelik are in Cairo to contribute to negotiations for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, the prime minister added. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told reporters in Islamabad that Hamas had accepted a cease-fire document on the night of Nov. 20, while Israel had failed to do so.