Syrian officials however have repeatedly said that any normalization in ties can only come after Turkey agrees to pull out thousands of troops from the rebel-held northwest.
President Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted AK Party has toughened its rhetoric against the LGBT community over the past decade and banned pride marches since 2015, citing “security reasons.”
“What is currently happening in Gaza in response to the terrorist attack on Israel does not resemble a war at all. It is akin to the complete elimination of the civilian population,” Putin claimed.
Turkish capital hosts ‘Hamas festival,’ with clerics and political leaders praising the October 7 massacre and openly expressing anti-Jewish bigotry.
"Raising the import tariff on Turkey is a suitable Zionist answer to Erdogan," Smotrich said. "For too many years, the State of Israel struggled with Erdogan's antisemitism. Not on my shift!"
The shutdown, which Turkey’s Islamist-leaning president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on May 3, is putting pressure on prices in Israel and cutting off a major trade route for kosher food.
Erdogan insists that Hamas has not been carrying out terrorist operations from Turkey despite meetings with Hamas leaders and allowing the Palestinian group to maintain offices in Istanbul.
As ties between Israel and Turkey reach a historic low, Turkey, under Erdogan's leadership, has stopped all trade with Israel in response to the ongoing Gaza war.
Thursday's meeting was the first between Erdogan and a CHP leader since 2016, when he hosted then-chief Kemal Kilicdaroglu at the presidential palace after an attempted military coup.
The exercise comes as Poland declares its willingness to host NATO nuclear weapons, leading Russia to issue a threat.
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