The Turkish government welcomed a delegation of high-ranking Hamas terrorists to Ankara on Wednesday to lend support to the jihadist cause and support the ongoing ceasefire between Hamas and the state of Israel.
The office of Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan published photos of the president alongside his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and the Hamas delegation, which was reportedly led by Hamas Shura Council head Muhammad Darwish.
President @RTErdogan received Mr. Mohammed Ismail Darwish, Chairman of the Hamas Shura Council, and his accompanying delegation at the Presidential Complex. pic.twitter.com/kedlBKtZiY
— Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye (@trpresidency) January 29, 2025
The Hamas terrorists received a warm welcome including the presence, in addition to Erdogan and Fidan, of “National Intelligence Organization chief Ibrahim Kalin and Communications Director Fahrettin Altun,” according to the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish government offered few details on the meeting other than to share that Erdogan extended his country’s support to Hamas’s cause, which is the extermination of the Israeli people and those who do not agree to its fundamentalist vision of Islam. He used the platform to condemn Israel for its self-defense operations against Hamas in the aftermath of the terrorists’ October 7, 2023, siege of the country, and to predict that Hamas’ bloodthirsty mission would continue even if the ceasefire continues in vigor.
“Hamas’ 471-day struggle has demonstrated once again the spirit of resistance will not disappear,” Erdoğan reportedly told the Hamas terrorists, according to the Erdogan-friendly Daily Sabah newspaper. “We will continue exposing the realities in Gaza.”
Hamas used the Gaza strip, where it is the governing entity, to launch the October 7 attack that killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in over 200 abductions. Part of the current ceasefire agreement entails Hamas freeing about 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned under Israel’s legal system for a variety of crimes. Hamas supporters argue that the self-defense operations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to dismantle terrorist operations in Gaza violate international law. Erdogan himself, arguably the most powerful Hamas supporter in the world, has repeatedly justified the October 7 attacks while comparing Israel’s self-defense operations to the actions of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
The meeting with the Hamas leaders this week follows the deaths of the most powerful members of the terrorist organization in various circumstances in the past year. The leader of the Hamas “political” office, Ismail Haniyeh, died in a mysterious blast in Tehran this summer, where he was attending the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, died in October in a confrontation with IDF soldiers. Palestinians in Gaza have turned the rubble of the building where he died in Gaza into a pilgrimage site, attracting hundreds of Hamas supporters.
Shortly after Erdogan met with the leaders of one of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations, the Turkish Defense Ministry issued a statement affirming that Turkey would “continue taking decisive measures against terrorist organizations,” referring to neighboring Syria.
“We will continue to take preventive and decisive measures against all terrorist groups,” Brig. Adm. Zeki Akturk, a Defense Ministry spokesman, asserted on Thursday, referring to a Turkish delegation traveling to Damascus on Wednesday to meet with the jihadist leadership of the country. Syria fell into the hands of the al-Qaeda linked terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in December following the collapse of the longstanding Assad family dynasty.
In Syria, as in Gaza, Erdogan has chosen to support terrorist entities. Erdogan has been far more enthusiastic in his support of Hamas than other terrorist groups, however, repeatedly declaring that the Israeli government, not the jihadist organization, is the one engaging in terrorism.
Shortly after the October 7 massacre, Erdogan organized a massive event he called the “Great Palestine Rally” to support Hamas. The rally took over the space of Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport and reportedly convened 1.5 million people in support of genocidal slaughter.
“Israel, we will declare you to the world as a war criminal. We are preparing for introducing Israel to the world as a war criminal,” Erdogan told the crowd at the event, dismissing the Hamas killings as minor “regrettable events.”
“Hamas is not a terrorist organization,” he reiterated.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Erdogan compared Israel’s leaders to Adolf Hitler for seeking to protect civilians from the brutality of his Hamas allies.
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity,” he demanded. “The just resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupiers of their land is noble, it’s honorable, and legitimate.”
On October 7, in addition to massacring over a thousand people, Hamas terrorists engaged in extensive torture of their civilian victims. The terrorists engaged in door-to-door raids, entering homes in residential communities and killing entire families, many while they were asleep. Evidence suggests they killed victims as young as infants and engaged in torture and the gang rape of many of their victims.
Erdogan revealed in May that his hospitals in Turkey had treated over 1,000 Hamas terrorists fighting Israel.