Due to the Israeli bombings on the beleaguered Gaza Strip, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has reportedly severed contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is no longer in any way an intermediary for us. In statements released by his press office, Erdoğan declared, “We have crossed him out and erased him.””All diplomatic options” are being used by Turkey to “stop the bloodshed,” the Turkish leader continued, including negotiations with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and intelligence services as well as with Hamas and Palestinian authorities.

Before the extraordinary terror attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli towns on October 7 and Israel’s intense bombardment of Gaza, Netanyahu and Erdoğan had personally met in September on the fringes of the UN General Assembly and decided to pay each other a visit.

As part of a normalization process, the Israeli prime minister was initially scheduled to visit Turkey in early November.

Erdoğan stated on a flight back from Kazakhstan that Netanyahu “has lost the support of his citizens” and that he is trying to get support for the “massacres” in Gaza by “using religious terminology.”

He clarified, though, that Ankara is not cutting diplomatic ties with Israel.