Turkey will never forget the nine Turks killed when Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, days before the submission of a U.N. report on the raid last year. In a speech to a conference of foreign ambassadors to the Palestinian territories in Istanbul, Erdogan condemned the continuing blockade of Gaza as “illegal and inhuman” and said the Palestinians’ troubles were Turkey’s troubles and would not go neglected.
Erdogan opened his speech by naming each of the men killed in the raid on the Mavi Marmara ferry, which led the activists flotilla. “We have not forgotten, nor will we forget, the self-sacrifice of our brothers, their memories and the massacre they were subjected to,” he said. Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel after the incident in May 2010, suspended military cooperation, and closed its airspace to Israeli military aircraft.
It wants Israel to apologise for the killings, pay compensation to the families, and end the embargo of Gaza. For its part, Israel has agreed in principle to pay compensation, but says its marines acted in self-defence after an initial boarding party was attacked with knives and clubs. It says the blockade is justified to prevent arms smugglers ferrying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist group which runs Gaza.
