Turkey’s interior minister on Saturday said that his country will one day bring about the “liberation” of Jerusalem, vowing to restore Turkish control to the city that the Ottoman Empire ruled for hundreds of years.

The comments drew sharp rebuke from Israel, with the Foreign Ministry saying that the “Ottoman Empire is gone” and that Jerusalem “shall remain the eternal capital of Israel.”

“Just as we witnessed the liberation of Damascus, Aleppo, and Karabakh, God willing, one day we will also witness the liberation of Jerusalem,” Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said in a speech at a ruling AKP Party conference in the city of Çorum.

Çiftçi was referring to the December 2024 fall of the Assad regime in Syria at the hands of Turkish-backed rebel militants, and the 2023 Azerbaijani capture and expulsion of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian breakaway state that controlled much of western Azerbaijan for decades.

In his speech, Çiftçi recalled how he used to pray for God to grant him “governorship of Jerusalem, even if just for a single day.”

“I still believe that the Almighty will show us those days,” he said.

Şam'ın, Halep'in, Karabağ'ın özgürlüğünü gördüğümüz gibi inşallah bir gün Kudüs'ün de özgürlüğünü göreceğiz. Benim valiyken Cenabı Hak'tan bir niyazım vardı. Malum burada beş sene valilik yaptıktan sonra Erzurum'a tayin oldum. İki buçuk sene de orada görev yaptım. İçten içe… pic.twitter.com/8Ybw4tJH4g Advertisement if(typeof rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner != "function" || !rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner("#Article_Incontent1")){ window.tude = window.tude || { cmd: [] }; tude.cmd.push(function() { if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("rgbmedia-app") > -1){ tude.setDeviceType("mobile"); } tude.refreshAdsViaDivMappings([ { divId: 'Article_Incontent1', baseDivId: 'Article_Incontent1', } ]); }); } — Mustafa ÇİFTÇİ (@mustafaciftcitr) June 6, 2026

Şam'ın, Halep'in, Karabağ'ın özgürlüğünü gördüğümüz gibi inşallah bir gün Kudüs'ün de özgürlüğünü göreceğiz.

Benim valiyken Cenabı Hak'tan bir niyazım vardı. Malum burada beş sene valilik yaptıktan sonra........

© The Times of Israel