Take Turkey to Court

Why it is time for the world to hold Turkey accountable for aiding and abetting genocide

Israel should take Turkey to Court. The International Court of Justice, to be specific. For decades, Israel sought to delegitimize international institutions for interstate adjudication out of fear of granting them reciprocal access to judging Israel. Well, that ship has sailed. Israel is now on the bench for crimes it did not commit, and now is the time to lean into the international community. To hold them accountable. If the Court is willing to accept the spurious case accusing Israel of genocide, time to take Turkey to task for being one of the world’s main champions of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Just last week, Turkey’s autocratically elected leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Parliament that Turkey will “continue to stand by Hamas, which fights for the independence of its own land and which defends Anatolia,” claiming that Hamas’s defeat of Israel is essential to his nation’s own security. He revealed that Turkey is treating over one thousand Hamas fighters to aid in the war effort, presumably to ensure they can return to their genocidal campaign of wanton violence against Israeli civilians.

In addition to Turkey’s historic genocide of the Armenians, and its on-going slow genocide of the Kurds for which Erdogan must be held to account, the speech has provided more than enough testimony to the fact the Turkey is committed to supporting the genocide of Israelis by Hamas and their allies. Turkey provides not only spiritual and diplomatic support to these genocidal actors, they provide material support too: Hamas owned companies are literally listed in the Turkish stock exchange, and Hamas leaders are given a statesman’s welcome by Ankara.

Instead of allowing Turkish insult to be followed by injury, it is time for the Government of Israel – or a third party who cares for international law – to use every diplomatic means necessary to hold the Turkish State accountable. It is obscene that a NATO member should aid and harbor a group fellow NATO allies have listed as a terrorist organization. It is unacceptable that Israel maintained economic dependency on the Turkish economy while it funded Hamas and its terrorist infrastructure from the profits. It is a political failure of unprecedented proportions that Benjamin Netanyahu has allowed Turkey to become one of Israel’s main enemies without repercussions.

The first step to righting this historic wrong is to drag them before the court. To seek an immediate injunction against Turkey to force it to delist Hamas’s companies. To issue international arrest warrants to arrest Hamas’ leadership so that they can be tried at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. To sanction any and all entities fueling Hamas’s murderous activities and to hold them accountable for destabilizing the region and lighting the fires now burning across the world.

There is a meme going around that Israel can’t trust any other country, that we can only count on ourselves to protect our interest. As Martin Kramer notes, that is a dangerous and ahistorical proposition. Israel would not have turned the tide in 1973 without the Americans, nor won 1967 without French aircraft, nor won our independence without Czech arms, nor survived the Nazi advance from North Africa without the British and American armies, nor survived the Inquisition without welcoming lands to the East. As an eternal people, Israel is and always has been a global people, an Am Olam. We have been since we left Egypt, and built our Temples with the blessings of the empires of the moment. It is time we internalize that understanding of global interdependence and act accordingly. We can start by taking Turkey to Court.