Turkey says airspace and trade closed to Israel after ‘reckless attacks’ in Gaza
Foreign minister says 'We do not allow Turkish ships to go to Israeli ports. We do not allow their planes to enter our airspace'
Turkey has severed all commercial and economic ties with Israel including closing its airspace to its planes, foreign minister Hakan Fidan has claimed.
“We have completely cut off our trade with Israel,” he told lawmakers during a debate on Gaza in the Turkish parliament.
“We do not allow Turkish ships to go to Israeli ports. We do not allow their planes to enter our airspace.”
Fidan said Israel’s “reckless attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran is the clearest sign of a terrorist state mentality defying international order”.
Turkish parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmus also called for Israel to be suspended from the UN and other international organisations during the debate, over its policies in Gaza, local media reported.
Turkey has signed an international initiative at the UN alongside 52 countries which calls for a halt in the supply of weapons and ammunition that “feeds Israel’s war machine”.
Last May it said it would stop all trade with Israel until the country allows humanitarian aid to flow uninterrupted into Gaza.
Turkey and Israel have had a free-trade agreement in place since 1997, with steel, oil and plastic among the major trade items.
Bilateral trade stood at nearly $6.8 billion in 2023, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute data. More than 75 per cent of this was Turkish exports.
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