There is no other war where women and children have been directly targeted as much as in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.

Stressing that these wars, conflicts, and destruction not only targets cities, countries and households but also innocent people, most of them women and children, Erdogan said that this reality in many conflict zones has been seen “painfully.”

“In the last 13 months, more than two-thirds of the over 50,000 innocent people killed in Gaza were women and children,” said Erdogan in an address to the International Women and Justice Summit in Istanbul.

“From hospitals to schools, from tents to aid lines, from places of worship to homes, we are facing a murder network that attacks, shoots and kills with the heaviest weapons,” he added, mentioning some of the many civilian sites that Israel has attacked since October 2023, flouting the rules of war, which bar such assaults.

He also praised the women of Gaza and Palestine, who work tirelessly to protect their children, families, homes, and cause in the face of a near-relentless barrage of bombs and gunfire.

Noting that the Gaza issue was at the top of Türkiye’s agenda this week at both an Organization of Turkic States leaders summit in Kyrgyzstan and a meeting of the European Political Community in Budapest, Erdogan said that he also drew attention to Gaza and Lebanon during his congratulatory call to Donald Trump on his successful bid to regain the US presidency.

Expressing his expectation that Trump will abandon the “flawed policies of the current administration” once he takes office in January, Erdogan also said that he “sincerely” believes that Trump will take the “necessary steps to end wars.”

Erdogan also marked the fourth anniversary of Azerbaijan’s victory retaking most of its Karabakh region, saying: “Just as Karabakh was liberated after 30 years of painful occupation, I believe that Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories will one day taste freedom.”

He added that Ankara will continue to stand by its “brothers and sisters” in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, both of them under siege by Israeli offensives, until the massacres stop and a cease-fire and lasting peace are established.