In speech to lawmakers, Turkey's Erdogan proclaims 'Jerusalem is ours'

"Jerusalem is ours, Jerusalem is from us," Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared recently in a key speech to lawmakers.

In his Thursday address at the opening of a new legislative session at the parliament, Erdogan touted the Ottoman legacy in the Holy Land.

"In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance," the Turkish leader proclaimed, as cited by the Times of Israel. 

The speech included a segment on the plights of the Palestinians, who, as Erdogan charged, were now "occupied" despite living in Jerusalem for "thousands of years."

Being able "to express the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people" on all available platforms was an honor for the Turkish nation, Erdogan said, as cited in the report.

The Ottoman Empire controlled Jerusalem in the period from 1516 to 1917, when it was overrun by British troops. 

From then on, the UK managed the city under the mandate of the League of Nations for several decades, until in 1948, British troops pulled out of the capital of the nascent Jewish state.

Jews, for their part, are linked with the city with a history dating thousands of years back, confirmed by troves of archeological and textual evidence.