Erdogan decries Israel as "spoiled boy"

Turkish Navy ships will “show up” more frequently in the East Mediterranean as part of measures against Israel, Turkey’s prime minister has said, slamming the Jewish state as the “spoiled boy” of the region. “The eastern Mediterranean Sea is not a region unfamiliar to us,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday in his first public comments on measures that Turkey was taking over Israel’s failure to apologize for killing nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship last year. Turkish forces stationed at naval bases in Aksaz and Iskenderun are capable of patrolling regional waters and escorting civilian ships in the Mediterranean, Erdogan told reporters. “Certainly, our ships will show up more frequently in these waters. We will see them [there] very frequently,” he said. “So far, Israel has always played the role of a spoiled boy in the face of U.N. resolutions concerning Israel, thinking that it would carry on with this role.” On Friday Ankara last said it would take action to ensure the safety of maritime navigation in the East Mediterranean as part of measures against Israel that included also the downgrading of diplomatic ties to the second-secretary level.