Egypt and Israel have blocked Turkish aircraft from using their airports to transport thousands of Palestinians wounded by Israeli troops during protests in Gaza, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has said.
Recep Akdag made the announcement on Wednesday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, amid a growing rift between Ankara and Tel Aviv over Israeli massacres of Palestinian protesters.
Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 others mostly with live gunfire on Monday during protests against the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Israeli forces shot dead two more protesters on Tuesday as Palestinians marked the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled in the 1948 war.
Since border protests and clashes began on March 30, 116 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the Gaza Strip.
Turkey has offered to evacuate the wounded from Gaza for emergency medical treatment.
Israel has rejected the request over “security concerns”, local media has reported.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday lashed out at the international “silence” over the Israeli killings.
“If the silence on Israel’s tyranny continues, the world will rapidly be dragged into a chaos where banditry prevails,” Erdogan said at a dinner in Ankara.
Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations and told Israel’s ambassador to Ankara to leave, also for an unspecified period of time.
That drew retaliation from Israel, which ordered the Turkish consul in Jerusalem to leave for an unspecified period of time.
