Turkey seeks an Interpol red notice for Netanyahu's arrest

Turkey's justice ministry has asked the country's interior ministry to have Interpol circulate red notices for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and one other suspect, so that both are sought by police abroad. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced the request on Friday.

Gurlek said domestic arrest warrants had already been issued for the two men, and that the charges against them include genocide, crimes against humanity and torture. The warrants belong to a criminal case before a heavy penal court in Istanbul in which 35 people are named, opened over the Israeli operation against activists who had set out to carry aid to Gaza.

The case goes back to the Global Sumud Flotilla. In May, Israeli forces fired on at least two of its boats as the convoy made another run at the coast of Gaza, after earlier attempts had been stopped in international waters.

A red notice is not an international arrest warrant. It is a request from one member state to police forces in the rest, asking them to find a wanted person and hold them while extradition is considered, and each government decides for itself whether to act. What the step does is move a file that has so far been Turkish into a channel where other states have to answer it — and Ankara has been pressing for exactly that, having issued warrants of its own over the war before now.

Relations between the two governments hardened further the same day. A statement from the Turkish presidency accused Netanyahu's government of "petty political tactics" and of trying to cast Turkey as a new threat.