Turkey Reiterates that Hamas is Not Considered a Terrorist Organization

The Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has stated that Turkey does not consider the Palestinian Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization, but this does not mean that Ankara encourages the death of innocent people. This was reported by RIA Novosti.

According to the country’s foreign minister, Ankara views Hamas as a political party within the system of a Palestinian state.

“Several countries, for instance, do not recognize organizations YPG and FETÖ (the Kurdish militants and the group of preacher Fethullah Gülen, which is banned in Turkey and linked to the attempted coup in 2016), which we classify as terrorist. We do not consider Hamas, which is part of the Palestinian political system, to be a terrorist organization. But that does not mean we encourage the deaths of innocent people; we condemn that from the very beginning of the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said Hakan Fidan in a briefing with his Danish counterpart in Ankara.

It’s worth noting that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had previously stated that Ankara does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization.