ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israel’s attacks on Syria and Lebanon had reached a point where they also threaten Turkiye, adding Israel’s aggression posed a threat to the whole world and must be stopped.

Turkiye has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s assaults on Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon, saying the Jewish state was the biggest obstacle to regional peace. It has halted all trade with Israel and called for measures against it at international courts.

“The attacks by (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his network of murder in Lebanon and Syria have brought the issue to a point where it also threatens Turkiye,” Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling AK Party in parliament. “Our security is tied to that of these two countries.”

The Turkish leader also said Israel was leading a sneaky effort to destabilise African countries and the Mediterranean by igniting “the fire of discord” on the ethnically-split island of Cyprus. “These small entities, whose ambitions far exceed their size, have boarded Israel’s boat of mischief, taken on the role of Zionist subcontractors, and are pursuing some pipe dreams in the Eastern Mediterranean,” he said, without elaborating. “Nobody should chase adventures... I want everyone to know that if the rights of Turkiye and Turkish Cypriots are violated in the Mediterranean, our response will be very clear and very strong.”

Turkiye holds Israel responsible for starting the Iran war. Erdogan urged world powers to take a more clear stance against Israel, saying it was emboldened by the “silence of international community”.

“Pulling Israel back to within the bounds of the rule of law has become a shared duty not just for certain countries, but for all of humanity,” he said.

Air strikes kill 13 in Lebanon

Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon killed 13 people on Wednesday, as Tel Aviv pressed its campaign against Hezbollah and the latter claimed fresh attacks against Israeli forces.

The dead included nine people killed in the village of Dayr Debba, eight kilometres east of Tyre.

Television footage showed vehicles ablaze in the southern city of Sidon after an Israeli air strike. More than three months since the US-Israeli attack on Iran ignited conflict around the Middle East, Lebanon remains a major frontline in the war.

The Lebanon war sparked escalation in the wider conflict earlier this week when Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting Iran to retaliate.

Almost 3,700 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli attacks since March 2, 730 of them women, children or medics. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon.

Twenty-eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat in Lebanon, while four civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks. A Lebanese soldier died on Wednesday from wounds caused by an Israeli air strike in the south on March 17, the Lebanese military said.

Israelis seize councillor, worker

Israeli forces seized a municipal councillor and a worker in southern Lebanon, state media reported, as Tel Aviv pursued its strikes on the country.

“An Israeli patrol took away Kfarshuba municipal council member Mohammad Hassan al Hajj and worker Ahmad Salah Diab, taking them to an unknown location,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

“The two men were working to pump water to the town of Kfarshuba when the Israeli patrol stopped them and took them away,” it said.

Sunni-majority Kfarshuba is among a few, mostly Christian southern villages whose residents chose to stay throughout the Lebanon conflict.

On Tuesday, the association of Chris­tian border villages in southern Lebanon issued a statement urging Beirut to “open safe humanitarian and medical corridors to ensure the access of citizens, aid, and medical and relief teams to the affected and isolated villages”.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2026