Originally published 2021-05-19. Dates, ages and announcements in this article refer to May 2021.
On 18 May 2021 the US State Department publicly condemned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for what it called antisemitic comments. The remarks came during the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, when Erdoğan was one of the loudest international critics of Israel. Turkey rejected the accusation the next day. Here is what was said, why Washington reacted, and why the language crossed a line that criticism of a government should not cross.
What the State Department said
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States strongly condemned Erdoğan's recent comments about Jewish people and called them reprehensible. He urged the Turkish president and other Turkish leaders to stop making incendiary remarks that could stir up more violence. "Anti-Semitic language has no place anywhere," Price said.
Price did not list which remarks he meant, and early reports noted that the department had not immediately answered requests to clarify. News agencies pointed to statements Erdoğan had made in speeches over the previous days.
What Erdoğan was reported to have said
As the fighting went on, Erdoğan accused Israel of terrorism against Palestinians and called it a terror state. He also attacked President Joe Biden, saying the US leader had blood on his hands because of US diplomatic support for Israel.
Two lines drew the strongest reaction. AFP reported that Erdoğan said of the people he was attacking: "It is in their nature." He also called them murderers who kill children and are "only satisfied by sucking their blood." Reports differed on whether he was speaking about Israelis or about Jewish people more broadly, but the State Department treated the remarks as being about Jews.
On 19 May Erdoğan defended his words in a televised speech, saying he would speak out as loudly as possible wherever he saw cruelty.
Why these words were seen as antisemitic
Criticising the policies or military actions of a government, including Israel's, is normal political speech. What made these comments different was the content. Claiming that violence is part of a people's nature assigns a fixed, inborn evil to a whole people. That is a classic feature of racist and antisemitic rhetoric.
The image of drinking children's blood carries an even heavier history. For nearly nine centuries Jews have been falsely accused of killing children to use their blood, a myth known as the blood libel. It first appeared in Norwich, England, in 1144 and spread across Europe, leading to massacres, executions and expulsions, including the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290. It fuelled the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and still appears in propaganda and conspiracy theories today. When a head of state reaches for that imagery, many listeners hear the old libel, whatever the speaker intends.
How Turkey responded
Turkey rejected the US statement. Fahrettin Altun, Erdoğan's communications director, wrote on Twitter that the accusations were absolutely unacceptable, according to AFP and Turkish Minute. The governing AK Party also called the charge of antisemitism a slander against a leader it described as courageous.
Turkish officials argued that the real issue was the death toll in Gaza and accused critics of trying to divert attention from it. Erdoğan was at the time pressing for international sanctions on Israel.
The Gaza war behind the dispute
The 2021 crisis began in early May with protests over planned evictions of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem and clashes at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, where Israeli police used tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades. On 10 May Hamas fired rockets towards Jerusalem and Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza.
The fighting lasted 11 days until an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire took effect on 21 May. At least 256 Palestinians were killed, including 66 children, and 13 people were killed in Israel, including two children. These deaths were the backdrop to Erdoğan's speeches, and they help explain the anger, though not the language.
A strained moment in US-Turkey relations
The row came at a delicate time. In April 2021 Biden had formally recognised the 1915–1917 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, a historical fact that Ankara still disputes and that angered the Turkish government. Biden had also called Erdoğan an autocrat during his campaign. The two leaders were due to hold their first meeting at a NATO summit in Brussels in June 2021, and the exchange over antisemitism added another layer of tension between the two NATO allies.
Turkey was then one of the few Muslim-majority countries with diplomatic relations with Israel, and Erdoğan had positioned himself for years as a champion of the Palestinian cause.
Reading stories like this carefully
- Separate the speaker from the target. Erdoğan's words, the US government's description of them and commentary about them are three different things.
- Separate a state from a people. Holding a government responsible for its actions is legitimate. Blaming Jews everywhere for Israel's policies, or describing any people as violent by nature, is not.
- Check translations. Speeches given in Turkish were reported in English through agency translations, so exact wording can vary between outlets.
The episode was brief, but it is a clear example of how quickly anger over a real war can slide into language that targets a whole community.
Sources: France 24/AFP, May 2021; Reuters, May 2021; Turkish Minute; Wikipedia: 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis; Wikipedia: Blood libel.
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