Post date: Nov 16, 2012 3:15:40 PM
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan lays blame for latest conflict firmly on Israel.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY (NOVEMBER 16, 2012) (REUTERS) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan decried Israeli's air strikes on Gaza on Friday (November 16) as a pre-election stunt and said he would discuss the crisis with Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi in Cairo this weekend.
Under Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party, Turkey has sought to use its clout as a rising democratic power in the Muslim world to increase its influence in the Middle East, distancing itself from former allyIsrael.Erdogan said he would speak by phone with U.S. President Barack Obama later on Friday and thatAnkara was also seeking talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the prospect of a full Israeli ground invasion.
The United States says it has asked Turkey and Egypt to encourage the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza to cease rocket fire into Israel, but Erdogan laid the blame for the deepening crisis firmly on the Jewish state.
"Before this election they (Israel) shot these innocent people in Gaza for reasons they fabricated," he told reporters in Istanbul.
Relations between Turkey - once Israel's only Muslim ally - and the Jewish state have crumbled since Israeli marines stormed a Gaza-bound ship in 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing nine Turks in clashes with activists on board.
This week, two days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza and the drafting of reserve troops have raised fears of a full ground invasion in an attempt to end militant rocket salvoes, a few of which have crashed nearIsrael's biggest city Tel Aviv for the first time.
Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday. Twenty-two Palestinians have died in the air strikes since Wednesday (November 14).
The Gaza conflagration has fanned the fires of a Middle East aflame with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spill beyond its borders.