Erdogan's Reaction to Netanyahu's Shameless Request

TEHRAN (Defapress) - According to Al Jazeera, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again announced his opposition to handing over an inscription from occupied Jerusalem to the Israeli regime, which Tel Aviv says has been in Quds' possession since the Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shamelessly seeking to obtain the "Siloam Inscription".

He told Netanyahu: "We will not give even a pebble from Quds, let alone the tablet engraved on it."

Turkey believes that it cannot hand over any trace of Jerusalem except to the legitimate Palestinian government, because the Israeli regime has occupied the city since 1967 and has no legal sovereignty over it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Turkey has an ancient inscription that confirms the Jewish connection to Quds, but is refusing to hand it over to Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu added that in 1998, he had asked then-Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz to give him the inscription “at any price and in exchange for anything,” but Yilmaz refused, stressing that this was not possible.

The Israeli regime has repeatedly made requests to obtain the tablet through official and unofficial channels, the most recent of which was on March 9, 2022, after the visit of its president, Isaac Herzog, to Ankara. At that time, the Israeli media even claimed an initial understanding that Turkey would hand over the inscription to the Israeli regime in exchange for another ancient piece, which turned out to be a lie.