(Article posted on June 30, 2026.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hit back at Israel on Tuesday after the country unanimously voted on Sunday to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.

The recognition and the subsequent spat is the latest episode in a worsening relationship between the two countries, which has taken a nosedive with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

“We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands,” Erdoğan said after a cabinet meeting. “In our history there is no genocide, no massacre, no oppression, and no colonialism.”

Erdoğan has repeatedly said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and last week Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described Israel’s Armenian genocide recognition vote as “an attempt to cover up their own crimes.” Israel’s government has strongly denied committing genocide.

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In Tuesday’s address, Erdoğan argued that Israel’s recognition is undercut both by its own “barbarity in Gaza” and by Turkey’s history of rescuing Jews from the Holocaust during the Second World War.

“There is the virtue of protecting those who fled from … Nazi persecution,” Erdoğan said. “Those who slander Turkey and the Turkish nation … know this best, if they look at their own history.”