By Gozde Bayar
ANKARA (AA) — Raising awareness on the "barbarities" committed against the people of Gaza and preventing Israeli disinformation are among Türkiye's chief duties, the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday.
"Recording and announcing the barbarities against our Gazan brothers and preventing Israel's disinformation efforts are among our most important duties," Erdogan said in a video message to Extraordinary Session of the Islamic Conference of Information Ministers, an event in Istanbul involving OIC member and observer countries.
Erdogan said Israel is using all means at its disposal to cover up its "war and crimes against humanity," including through propaganda and by distorting facts.
Israel has also been taking advantage of its influence over global media organizations, while at the same time accelerating its disinformation efforts, he added.
Noting that Western media outlets have contributed to Israel's "propaganda machine" with their biased coverage, the Turkish president said Muslim nations have a duty to "prevent lies from obscuring the truth."
"The Israeli administration, backed by the unconditional support of the Western powers, is brutally massacring the Gazans whom it has squeezed into a small patch of land," he said, adding that women, children, and the elderly make up the overwhelming majority of deaths from Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave.
Underlining that Israeli forces have also targeted members of the press, he said "the number of members of the media killed by Israel to silence the voice of the free press is over 100."
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas. The ensuing Israeli war has killed more than 29,600 people and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Nearly 70,000 people have been injured.
Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.