Turkey stops all trade with Israel over ‘humanitarian tragedy’ in Gaza

Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldbanned from sitebanned from communitybanned from site to World News@lemmy.world – 536 points – Turkey stops all trade with Israel over ‘humanitarian tragedy’ in Gaza
theguardian.com

Turkey has halted all trade with Israel, citing the “worsening humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories, which prompted strong criticism from the Israeli foreign minister.

“Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products,” Turkey’s trade ministry said late on Thursday.

“Turkey will strictly and decisively implement these new measures until the Israeli government allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, accused Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of acting like a “dictator” after the restrictions were first reported.

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Gd, when even fucking Erdogan thinks you're going too far. I know they're a usually antagonistic force to the West, but they are a real player in the region, so this is still good pressure on Israel. Even if it happens to be opportunistic.

Turkey/Erdogan aligns with the West most of the time. He's antagonistic sometimes, and that's what makes headlines so is the image most people have developed of him. He's been staunchly pro-Palestine since he took office in 2003, and has had pretty poor relations with Israel for almost the entire last 20 years, so this is not surprising

I can't believe joe brandon and snoozin trump are being outflanked on the left by a right wing dictator. Broken clock or something I guess.

Erdoğan resisted this as long as possible. But the public opinion in Turkey is so strongly anti-genocide right now that he was forced into this by the opposition.

Erdoğan loves to talk tough on Israel, but normally he doesn't actually follow up.

Turkey is strongly anti-genocide as long as it doesn't involve Kurds or Armenians, then they are completely pro-genocide.

*the Turkish nationalists.

There's millions of lovely and non-genocidal people in Turkey. Source: learning Turkish since 2015 and travel there a lot

Fun fact. Azerbaijan and Israel are allies. Israel receives most of its Oil and Gas from Azerbaijan, Israeli drones helped murder Armenians in the last war and Israel has a deal going on with the azerbaijani oil and gas company to developed the Gas fields they want to steal from the Palestinians at the coast of Gaza.

So if you want to be against genocide against Armenians it is a good way to go about being against supporting Israel.

Overwhelmingly Muslim country with a head of government who has reinforced their Muslim identity to safeguard his own power. This doesn't have as much to do with leftism or humanitarism as it has to do with being somewhat coherent with their declared in-group, lest their own base turns against them. I think the move is good though, even if I don't trust their reasons.

While they do make it sound good, I wouldn't be sure this is coming from a leftist ideal. More than likely this is about power, because it's always about power (not just for Turkey, but for every nation). There's something Turkey gains by doing this. I don't really know what, but I can promise you it's there.

Yeah I'm also having trouble finding his angle. Maybe Turkey is finally wisening up to Russian Aggression after all this time and wants the US focus to shift off of the Israeli conflict and onto the Ukraine front?

Maybe they want to get back to a point where they can purchase new Jets again, lol. They got banned from the program because they were also buying Russian fighters at the time.

I suspect it's as ideological as Israel's actions against Palestinians unfortunately.

well the thing about having a dictator is they tend not to have to explain their reasoning, likely its something stupid and personal

Let’s make no mistake, this dude isn’t doing this out of some semblance of morals. Dudes an authoritarian dictator

He was forced into doing this by the opposition. The opposition won a major election against Erdo in March, and Israel was a major point he got hit on.

Why is he doing it then?

I actually would like to know the answer. Maybe he's trying to get an easy win over the West? Maybe he's trying to more strongly align with the Muslim world?

Analysis: Ruling party errors give Turkey’s opposition hope for future

Finally, another factor has emerged in the past six months as a result of Israel’s war on Gaza – a widespread perception that the government has ignored its core base’s emotional response to the suffering in Gaza and disappointment with its policies on the issue.

This has created a sense of betrayal and alienation among those who have traditionally supported the ruling party because of its ties to Islamic identity and has been one of the fundamental causes of the rise of the conservative New Welfare Party, which advocates cutting trade links and severing diplomatic ties with Israel.

Turns out Genocide on brown people is less popular in the middle east.

"Humanitarian tragedy"

Just say "genocide", cowards.

Ask an Armenian why Erdogan chooses those words

Ooh pick me, pick me, I'm American, but my great grandfather was Armenian. Want to know why he came to America suddenly?

It’s terrible. If it wasn’t for one of my best friends being Armenian, I most likely wouldn’t know. They didn’t teach that in any school I attended (thru college)

My great grandfather survived, my grandpa went on to have 7 kids and 5 of them went on to have kids (that we know of). We made the best of it. I'm going to teach my daughter about it when she's old enough to understand. Just do good in the world and tell not only our story, but all the other ones too.

the genocide of the Armenians is not taught about in German schools because it regularly resulted in attacks on teachers from turkish parents if teachers so much as spoke about it to their students.

Wtf? Why not just imprison the pro-genocide fucks? Why limit education instead?

Probably politicians pandering to the significant Turkish-German demographic

I learned about the Armenian genocide as well as the ongoing struggles of the Armenian people because of System of a Down. Pretty sure if it wasn't for that band, I would have never heard about it.

At least you didn't learn about it from the Kardashians like millions of people did 😬

A right-wing dictator fighting another right-wing dictator. Kinda funny

TFW someone stands up to Israel but its fucking Erdogan

Willing to bet real money that the US has a stronger reaction to Turkey doing this than to Israel actually doing genocide.

Thanks to the complexities or modern geopolitics and culture, as well as pressure from Turkish public opinion, just this time Erdoğan is on the right side of History.

A good move by Turkey.

At the surface level - itd call it moralistic at best.

Whether it was a good move - Israel is something like 76% of Turkey exports. You think that will bode well for jobs and general quality of life?

Sorry, looks like it's much less. Going to have to go back and check where I found that.

Edit: great, now confused. I think it's 76% of Israel imports was turkey exports. Source is Bloomberg, but posted on .ml

https://lemmy.ml/post/15161455

Source

Its so refreshing to see actual data instead of people just constantly making shit up

Still verify when you can. AI will get better at spitting out graphics like this.

There is a very good reason I refused to argue with UNCOMTRADE - wherever I read that it was 79% has considerable less authority than even a 5 second search on COMTRADE.

Found it - 76% of Israel import from Turkey

https://lemmy.ml/post/15161455

Although it was a misreading, I do appreciate you making the effort to come back with a source.

Thank you for sticking to facts and data instead of accusation and personal assumptions

That says Turkish exports constituted 76% of the total bilateral trade amount between the two countries. They both have many larger trading partners separate from their bilateral trade relationship

Israel is 2.8% of Turkeys exports.

Quality post +1

Found the link- looks like 76% of Israel imports are Turkey exports. Excuse the .ml link

https://lemmy.ml/post/15161455

Interesting, other than it being linked to .ml, and the article being paywalled:

Trade between the countries was worth $6.8 billion in 2023, of which 76% was Turkish exports, according to the Turkish statistical institute.

Total trade between the two countries is worth $6.8, 76% of that $6.8 billion is made up Turkist exports. That doesn't mean that Israel buys 76% of Turkeys exported products.

https://archive.is/B7m4w

Are you some kind of CEO? You're implying that you should abandon your morals if it hurts your bottom line.

You wanted to insult the Turkish government but you just wound up making them sound awesome

When you as a government are talking about the welfare of your people, yes, I expect them to look after their own.

Another person clarified eairler - looks like my number was ~20× inflated. Will need to check my source as that changed the effects considerably.

he would never do that, if the second biggest islamic party, known as yeniden refah partisi, didn't say so. some ak parti voters, voted to yeniden refah partisi, just because they didn't want this to continue. fatih erbakan, who is in charge of that party, probably will cause more problems in the future for erdogan

Erdogan stopped wagging his ZIonist tail real quick after his massive losses in the recent election

what's fucking funny is that, turkish journalists had already reported his transactions to israel way before the election, it didn't made it to news, even opposition parties didn't talked about it.

Turkey is invading Rojava/Kurdistan right now. What a fucking double standard.