The prime minister of Turkey compared the Israeli prime minister to the Paris terror attackers on Thursday after Israel’s foreign minister called President Erdogan of Turkey an “anti-Semitic bully”
BAGHDAD — If the Paris attacks unleashed a powerful demonstration of unity, with world leaders gathering to denounce terrorism, they also touched off a divisive new chapter in the war of words between Turkey and Israel, once stalwart allies but now bitter rivals.
The latest exchange came on Thursday when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey said both the Paris gunmen who attacked a French newspaper and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, were guilty of “crimes against humanity.”
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had already criticized Mr. Netanyahu for participating in the march of solidarity with other world leaders in Paris on Sunday, saying that Israel had been “waging state terror” in Gaza. A top Israeli official fired back, calling Mr. Erdogan an “anti-Semitic bully.”
Turkey’s prime minister then equated Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza with the actions of the gunmen who killed 17 people last week in Paris. “If Israel is looking for a bully,” he added in a televised news conference on Thursday, “it needs to look in the mirror.”
