Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that his government would not give into the "Jewish lobby" that he says is working against the ruling AKP Party.
"I announce it from here: we have not and will not succumb to the Jewish lobby, the Armenian lobby or the Turkish-Greek minority's lobbies," Davutoglu said at a party gathering Sunday.
Arbitrary references to the "Jewish lobby" in the Muslim world can be construed as anti-Semitic sentiment without factual evidence supporting such claims. Leaders in various countries have historically blamed Jews and Israel for internal woes to alleviate domestic pressure and propagate the concept of an external enemy in order to cultivate regime legitimacy.
The vague allegations come in context of baseless accusations by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who says that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was cooperating with the "parallel structure," or members within the government allegedly seeking to topple the regime.
"The sincere people backing this parallel structure should see with whom this structure is cooperating with … Shame on them if they still cannot see that this structure is cooperating with the Mossad," Erdogan said Jan. 31.
Key Turkish leaders have made numerous controversial and anti-Semitic statements in the past. Last year, Erdogan compared Israel to Hitler and predicted that the Jewish state "will drown in the blood that they shed" at a rally before his presidential election. The Turkish president has also referred to Israel as a "crime against humanity." His government actively supports Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, committed to the Jewish state's destruction.
Other senior Turkish officials have also blamed their country's problems on Jews.
The ruling AKP party mayor of Ankara also referenced the popular summer 2013 anti-government protests in Gezi as "a game of the Jewish lobby."
"World powers and the Jewish Diaspora prompted the unrest and have actively encouraged it," said now former Turkish deputy prime minister Besir Atalay in July 2013.