His comments risk fuelling the increasingly tense relationship between the two countries after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, criticised Netanyahu for attending the anti-terror solidarity march in Paris at the weekend.
Netanyahu replied on Wednesday that Erdoğan’s “shameful remarks must be repudiated by the international community”.
Davutoğlu said Netanyahu’s “crimes against humanity” included the deadly 2010 Israeli assault on a Turkish aid vessel and last year’s onslaught on Hamas-controlled Gaza.
In 2010, Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in an aid flotilla for the besieged Gaza Strip. Nine Turks died in the raid and one more died in hospital this year after four years in a coma.
Davutoğlu said Netanyahu was “the head of a government which massacred children playing in the beaches in Gaza and destroyed thousands of houses”. He said the Israeli government had “made almost natural the killing of Palestinians at every opportunity”, and had “massacred our citizens by launching an operation against an aid ship in the international waters”.
Israeli-Turkish relations – once a key partnership for the Jewish state with a Muslim nation – have steadily deteriorated under Erdoğan’s rule. The Turkish president is known for his angry outbursts, declaring in July that Israel had “surpassed Hitler in barbarism”.
In 2009, Erdogan walked off the stage at the World Economic Forum after an angry exchange with the then Israeli president, Shimon Peres.
On Thursday Davutoğlu also said the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad was an “open provocation”. “Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to insult,” he said after the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet and Turkish websites published cartoons featuring the prophet from this week’s special issue of Charlie Hebdo.
Cumhuriyet produced a four-page pullout of cartoons and articles from the French satirical magazine on Wednesday in solidarity with the 12 people shot dead in an attack on its offices in Paris.
Davutoğlu said: “We do not allow any insult to the prophet in this country. As the government, we cannot put side by side the freedom of press and the lowness to insult.”
He said people were sensitive about their religion and could not be expected to show patience towards insults against the prophet. “If some print cartoons that insult the prophet – and this is the situation and there is a sensitivity in Turkey – it is a provocation … it is an open provocation,” he said. “We are determined to protect the honour of the prophet the same way as we are determined in our stance against terrorism in Paris.”
On Wednesday a Turkish court ordered a block on access to websites featuring the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo, after a petition from a lawyer claiming that the printing of the cartoon had the potential to endanger public order.
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