A Turkish lawmaker collapsed in parliament Tuesday, suffering a heart attack at the end of a live-streamed parliamentary speech in which he slammed Israel and said it wouldn’t be able to “escape the wrath of Allah.”
Hasan Bitmez, 53, of the conservative Felicity Party, delivered an address at the General Assembly of the Turkish parliament, ending it by saying that “we can perhaps hide from our conscience but not from history,” and by addressing the Jewish state: “You will not escape the wrath of Allah.”
He then said, “I salute you all,” immediately before collapsing to the ground at the podium, with his head hitting the floor. Fellow members of the assembly rushed to his side. According to Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, Bitmez was hospitalized and his condition was “extremely critical and serious.”
Turkey had been in the midst of an effort to warm ties with Israel in the months before Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in southern Israel and the ensuing war, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has since sharply backtracked and returned to the same vitriolic attacks that characterized many of the Islamist leader’s previous years in power.
Last week, Erdogan reiterated his belief that Hamas is not a terror group and said it must have a part in rebuilding Gaza after the war, despite the backing Israel has received from the West to eliminate the Palestinian terror group from the coastal enclave, which it has ruled since 2007.
In the October 7 onslaught, 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through the border and massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians slaughtered in their homes and at a music festival, and seized 240 hostages, almost 140 of whom are still held captive in Gaza.
Erdogan warned Israel last week that it would “pay a very heavy price” if it attempted to eliminate Hamas members in Turkey, several days after recordings were revealed of the head of the Shin Bet security agency saying Jerusalem is determined to kill group leaders “in every location” around the world, including “in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar.”
Early in November, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel for consultations over the war in Gaza, although it said that it was not breaking off diplomatic ties entirely.
The two countries only restored full diplomatic ties in August 2022 after years of deteriorating relations.
