Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan had said on Friday that he hoped the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump would be able to urge Israel to “stop” its war efforts, suggesting that a good start [to his administration] would be stopping U.S. arms support to Israel.
“Trump has made promises to end conflicts… We want that promise to be fulfilled and for Israel to be told to ‘stop’. Mr. Trump cutting off the arms support provided to Israel could be a good start in order to stop the Israeli aggression in Palestinian and Lebanese lands,” Erdogan was cited as saying to reporters on a return flight from Budapest.
Note that Turkey has been a major critic of Israel’s offensives in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and in Lebanon, and has stopped trade with Israel. Turkey had also applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the World Court even though Israel has strongly denied the genocide accusations.
According to Erdogan, Trump’s presidency had the likelihood of seriously affecting political and military balances in the Middle East region, and that pursuing current U.S. policies would deepen deadlock in the region and spread the conflict.
