Israel’s Gaza genocide surpasses all terrorism: Turkish parliament speaker

No terrorist group could commit a crime more grave than Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, said Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus.

“Even if you brought together all the terrorist organisations in the world, they could not commit a crime against humanity greater than the genocide the terrorist Israeli regime has carried out against the people of Gaza over the past two years,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the silence of some countries that claim to speak out against terrorism in the face of Israel’s state terrorism is a grave lesson for all,” Kurtulmus said at the Global Parliamentary Conference on Counter-Terrorism and the Prevention of Violent Extremism, organised by the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism in the Turkish metropolis Istanbul.

Speaking on the second anniversary of the start of the genocide in 2023, Kurtulmus said that more than 70,000 civilians, 80 percent of them women and children, have been brutally killed, and over 180,000 people have been wounded, half of them severely.

“These figures come from UN reports, and the real toll is likely much higher,” he added.

“Nearly 7,000 families have been wiped out entirely. Schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches have been destroyed. The genocide has reached a level that shames even the word itself. Hunger is now being used as a weapon of death. There can be no greater act of terror than this.”

Kurtulmus noted that millions of people around the world have condemned this state terrorism, forming what he called a global front of humanity determined to end Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

Thanking Hassan bin Abdulla Al Ghanim, the speaker of Qatar’s Shura Council, for supporting the event, Kurtulmus described Türkiye and Qatar as two friendly, brotherly nations with deep strategic relations that advocate for peace and stability in their region.