Israel asks Erdogan about Kurds in response to Jerusalem remarks

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - The Prime Ministry of Israel on Tuesday slammed Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his statements laying claim to the city of Jerusalem where tensions have recently risen between Palestinians and the Jewish state.

"It is interesting what Erdogan would say to the residents of Northern Cyprus or the Kurds. Erdogan is the last person who can preach to Israel," Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement relayed by the Haaretz newspaper.

Erdogan this week declared that defending the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the divided Jerusalem "for us Muslims is not a matter of feasibility but one of faith."

Tensions in the city, which adherents of the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam regard sacred, erupted after three armed Palestinian assailants killed two Israeli police officers on 14 July in the north of Al Aqsa.

The killings prompted Israel to install metal detectors around the mosque in a move that led to widespread protests by Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“If today Israeli soldiers are heedlessly able to soil the compound with their boots citing trivial incidents as a pretext, and if Muslims’ blood is being easily shed there, then the reason for it is our failure to defend al-Quds [Jerusalem] strongly enough,” Erdogan said.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a separate statement in response to Erdogan, saying Turkey was occupying Northern Cyprus, brutally repressing the Kurdish minority and jailing journalists.

"The statement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to his party activists is absurd, unfounded and distorted," it read.

"He would be better off dealing with the difficult problems facing his own country," Israelis said.

"The days of the Ottoman Empire have passed. Jerusalem was, is, and will always be the capital of the Jewish people," added the Ministry, rebuking Erdogan's reminding of the city's past under the Turkic Empire.

"Those who live in glass palaces should be wary of casting stones," it added in a series of tweets on its official Twitter page.

Israel and Turkey, despite decades of commercial and military cooperation, maintain strained relations due to Erdogan government's warm ties with the militant Palestinian organization Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip.

Editing by Ava Homa