Turkish president calls for immediate halt to arms supplies for Israel

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on countries that continue to supply arms to Israel to end their “complicity in its crimes” in its months-long deadly offensive on Palestine's Gaza.

“Countries providing ammunition and weapon support to Israel's massacres must now refrain from complicity in these crimes,” Erdogan said during a joint news conference in the capital Ankara on Thursday with his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Prodding an international community that he says has not done enough to end the Gaza “massacre,” Erdogan also urged all “conscientious and responsible parties to take the wheel” to help reach an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

​​​​​​Gaza in ruins

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since an October 7 Hamas attack, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Some 36,600 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,000 others have been injured, according to local health authorities.

Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.​​​​​​​