Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said on Monday that its move aims to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Relations between the Israeli regime and Turkey soured in 2010 when Israeli commandos attacked the first Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31, killing nine Turkish activists on board the Mavi Marmara. The tenth victim of the attack died of his injures in May 2014.
Outgoing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in July that ties would remain frosty as long as Israel continues its Gaza offensive, noting that Tel Aviv must know that "if those massacres continue,” normalization of ties is out of question.
More than 1,940 Palestinians, including 470 children, have so far been killed and nearly 10,000 injured since Israel first launched its latest military offensive against the Gaza Strip on July 8. While the Israeli army says around 65 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas puts the number at more than 150.
Tel Aviv imposed an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade on Gaza in June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
