President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan severely criticized the chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, saying that Abbas did not respond to his invitation to speak before the Turkish parliament.
In a meeting with NGO managers and representatives of the public sector, Erdogan referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before the US Congress.
''Since October 7, Turkey has become the conscience of humanity in the matter of standing against oppression,'' he said. ''We have taken actions for our Palestinian brothers, regardless of what anyone said. We raised Israel's massacres at all international meetings. The Western world has performed poorly in this regard.''
He also said, ''We all watched these disgraceful images at the US House of Representatives. We are ashamed for humanity. We felt great embarrassment from the speech when we thought about the people waiting in line for food and the babies being killed. Rolling out the red carpet for someone like Netanyahu and applauding his lies is a big miss for the US.''
Erdogan addressed the criticism against him for not inviting Abbas to speak and said: ''Some political parties in his country say the government should invite the Palestinian president to Turkey and ask him to speak before the parliament. Who said we did not invite him to do so? I'm sorry Mr. Abbas did not come despite our invitation - he also needs to apologize to us.''
''We are waiting to see if he comes - we will continue to voice what needs to be said on behalf of the Palestinian people everywhere,'' he added.