Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks during a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey on July 26, 2025. Photo: Reuters.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that Turkey is closing its airspace and ports to Israeli aircraft and ships, and severing all economic and trade ties with Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza.
Fidan made the remarks during an address to the parliament on Friday, where he was apparently summarizing steps that Turkey has already taken against Israel or has started to implement over the regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza, which has so far killed more than 63,025 Palestinians.
“We have totally cut our trade with Israel, we have closed off our ports to Israeli ships and we are not allowing Turkish vessels to go to Israel’s ports,” Fidan told an extraordinary parliamentary session on Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
“We are not allowing container ships carrying weapons and ammunition to Israel to enter our ports, and airplanes to go into our airspace,” he added.
Clarifying the minister’s remarks, a Turkish diplomatic source told AFP that Turkey’s airspace was “closed to all aircraft carrying weapons (to Israel) and to Israel’s official flights.”
Last week, Reuters reported that Turkish port authorities had begun informally requiring shipping agents to submit letters confirming that vessels are not linked to Israel and are not carrying military or hazardous cargo bound for the occupying entity.
According to the report, Turkish-flagged ships would be barred from calling at ports in the occupied territories.
In his speech, Fidan said Israel is deliberately making Gaza uninhabitable “to force its people to leave.” He also noted that the regime opposes the emergence of a “new and strong Syria”, vowing that Ankara would not allow such a policy to continue.
Turkey has been a key backer of various militant groups opposing Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad in recent years, most notably the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which toppled Assad’s government last December.
Ankara had already declared a halt to all trade with Israel and called for international measures against the regime.
(PressTV)
