Israel cannot lay claim on Golan Heights: Erdogan

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said Israel has no rights over the Golan Heights.

"Under UN resolutions, Israel cannot lay claim even on a small bit of Golan Heights," Erdogan said at an election rally in Turkey's central province of Konya.

The UN Human Rights Council on Friday passed a resolution opposing the Israeli occupation of Golan Heights, urging Israel to comply with UN resolutions.

The resolution was accepted with 26 votes in favor, 16 against and five abstentions.

This came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said “it was time for the U.S. to fully recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights”.

Israel has long pushed Washington to recognize its claim over the territory it seized from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel occupies roughly two-thirds of the wider Golan Heights as a de facto result of the conflict. It moved to formally annex the territory in 1981 -- an action unanimously rejected at the time by the UN Security Council.

Today’s resolution called on Israel to allow Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights to visit their families, access of international institutions to the region and release all Syrian detainees, including those who have been held in Israeli jails for 30 years.

Also addressing the nation in an election rally in the Black Sea province of Amasya, Erdogan touched on last week's Islamophobic terrorist attack in New Zealand.

He said the terrorist -- who killed at least 50 Muslim people during weekly Friday's prayer by opening fire on them in the Al Noor and Linwood mosques -- showed how far such hostility against the Muslim community can go.

"It is now clear that no place in the world, no geography and no culture can shield itself against terror's poison and bloody fist," Erdogan said.

* Writing by Vakkas Dogantekin, Beyza Binnur Donmez