Türkiye is considering a separate appeal to an international court it applied to hold Israel accountable for what it did in Gaza and presented new evidence over Israel’s "genocide" targeting women and children in particular.
With the number of people slaughtered in Israel’s attacks exceeding 38,000 since October 2023, Türkiye aims to take new steps to stop the crisis in Gaza and the Netanyahu administration behind it. The country presented five folders of evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) where countries appealed to issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Two folders exclusively contain evidence of genocide against women and children.
Istanbul’s Second Bar Association has recently joined institutions applying to the ICC over Israel’s war crimes. A delegation from the association recently held talks with ICC prosecutors in The Hague. Emrah Karayel, a lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) who joined the delegation as a lawyer himself, says they told the prosecutors that the scope of the case should be expanded. "More people in Israel’s war cabinet should be added to the case apart from Netanyahu and Gallant," he says. "They told us more (defendants) can be added based on evidence and information."
Karayel says that the evidence they presented included their interviews with families of Gazans who were treated in Türkiye after suffering from injuries in Israeli attacks. "We will present more evidence, particularly on genocide of women and children. Women and children make up 70% of those killed. They are the real victims of the genocide. You can clearly see that they are deliberately targeted. The killing of children and women directly falls into the definition of genocide (which includes preventing childbirths in the targeted community)," he said.
The bar association’s delegation also held talks with officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) over the use of white phosphorus by Israel. "It is not classified as a chemical weapon under international agreements but we presented them doctors’ testimony and asked them for an investigation," Karayel said.
On May 20, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Israel also is not a member of the court, whereas Palestine was accepted as a member in 2015.
The ICC, established in 2002, is an independent international body not affiliated with the United Nations or any other international institution, and its decisions are binding.