Turkey on Wednesday joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
A Turkish parliamentary delegation accompanied by the Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands filed a “declaration of intervention” at the ICJ’s headquarters in The Hague, according to state television TRT which covered it live.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said in a post on X that the “case brought before the ICJ is extremely important to guarantee that the crimes committed by Israel do not remain unpunished.”
South Africa’s December 2023 case alleges that Israel’s Gaza offensive, launched in retaliation for Hamas’ bloody October 7 attack on Israel, breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Israel has strongly denied the accusation.
The case has since been joined by Colombia, Libya, Spain and Mexico.
After approximately 40,000 people were killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take all reasonable precautions to avoid genocide in a verdict on January 26.
In June, the court ruled that Israel had to grant entry to investigators sent by the UN to look into the claims of genocide.
Although ICJ decisions are legally enforceable, the court lacks practical tools to do so.
