(Bloomberg) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the U.S. for sending a group of warships to the eastern Mediterranean to show support for Israel following this weekend’s deadly attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
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“What is the US aircraft carrier doing in Israel?” Erdogan said this late on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Ankara. In an escalation of rhetoric against the US, he warned that its involvement in Gaza risked “massacres.”
The United States announced on Sunday that it would deploy the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes an aircraft carrier, a guided-missile cruiser and missile destroyers, as a deterrent. The United States has offered Israel equipment and ammunition in its counterstrike against Hamas, but so far there has been no indication that American warships would join the fight.
The US sends warships and supports them as a show of force while Israel strikes back
Erdogan’s criticism comes as Turkey, which supports the Palestinians’ quest for an independent state, is working to avert a broader escalation. The Turkish leader warned that prolonged conflict could engulf the Middle East and criticized Israel’s decision to cut off water and electricity to the isolated enclave.
The total death toll on the fifth day of the war has already exceeded 2,000, including more than 1,200 Israelis.
Israel has in the past accused Turkey of supporting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. The US considers the militant Islamist group a terrorist organization. Not Turkey. The USA and Turkey are NATO allies.
“What will it do with all its boats and planes on the aircraft carrier that comes here?” Erdogan said.
The Turkish presidency said Erdogan discussed ways in which the conflict could be prevented from spreading in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin late on Tuesday evening.
His comments came after the U.S. shot down an armed Turkish drone that got too close to American ground forces during air strikes on U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Syria last week.
Erdogan’s statements threaten to destroy the beginnings of détente in Turkey’s relations with Israel. Relations collapsed in 2010 when there was a deadly Israeli raid on a civilian Turkish flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza.
(Updates on phone conversation between Erdogan and Putin in eighth paragraph, changes.)
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