Israel blocks entry to Turkish tour group heading for Jerusalem

Israel has denied entry to dozens of Turkish tourists at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport after claiming that the tour group's visa had been forged.

The tour was organised by the Turkey-based Sila Tour Company and participants were due to visit Muslim holy sites, notably the al-Asqa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

The group was denied entry to Israel upon arrival at Ben Gurion airport.

Israel's foreign ministry alleged that an Israeli travel agent had "forged the group visa", but a representative for the Sila Tour Company told Turkey's Anadolu news agency that the group had been issued a collective visa by the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.

"Israel does not provide separate visas for each passenger to tour companies that bring tourists to Jerusalem," he said.

"The document issued by the consulate works as a visa for all passengers. We had received a visa letter in Hebrew for our passengers for travel on our Jerusalem tour but our 90 passengers were not allowed to enter Israel for allegedly not having visas."

Fifteen of the passengers were sent back immediately to Istanbul while a further 33 departed later on Sunday evening.

The remaining tourists are due to be sent back to Turkey on Monday.

Sumeyra Sevgulu Haciibrahimoglu, a 23-year-old masters student, told Anadolu that the tourists were separated into groups and questioned by Israeli security officials.

"After questioning some of our friends in the security inquiry room, we were taken to different rooms in groups," she said.

"Some of the families among us wanted to be in the same room but Israeli police rejected this request," she added.

"The only dream of the group that consists of mainly young people was to see Jerusalem."

Turkey's embassy in Tel Aviv is following the issue.

The incident comes at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

In May, both countries expelled each other's ambassadors after a war of words following Israel's massacre of dozens of Palestinian protesters in Gaza.

Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branded Israel the "most fascist, racist state" in the world after the Knesset passed a new law defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded by criticising Turkey's military campaigns inside Syria and calling Turkey a "dark dictatorship" under Erdogan following a mass crackdown after the 2016 failed coup.


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