Tens of thousands of people began the new year on Istanbul’s Galata Bridge on Wednesday, marching through freezing morning temperatures in one of the largest displays of public support for Palestinians held in Turkey since the Gaza war began.
Demonstrators gathered after dawn prayers at mosques across the city, including the Hagia Sophia, then walked to the bridge spanning the Golden Horn, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanting for an end to Israel’s military campaign. The rally was organized by the National Will Platform, an umbrella of civil-society groups, under slogans linking Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque to Turkey’s regional ambitions.
Key Points
- The march, led by hundreds of civic groups under the National Will Platform, filled the Galata Bridge and surrounding streets.
- Bilal Erdoğan, a son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the crowd, declaring Turkish support for Gaza, Palestine and Syria.
- Critics accused the government-aligned organizers of hypocrisy, citing reports of continued Azerbaijani crude shipments to Israel through a Turkish port.
“Yesterday Hagia Sophia, today the Umayyad Mosque, tomorrow Al-Aqsa”
The slogan carried on banners traced the arc of Ankara’s self-image: the 2020 conversion of the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, the December prayer of Turkey’s intelligence chief at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus days after Bashar al-Assad fell, and the aspiration — central to the rally’s message — of Muslim access to and protection of Al-Aqsa. Bilal Erdoğan, who heads an educational foundation and is a leading figure in the organizing platform, told the crowd that no one should think Turkey is asleep, saying “we are here, Turkey is here.”
Turkey has been among the most vocal critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, which Palestinian health authorities say has killed more than 45,000 people since October 2023. Ankara recalled its ambassador, halted direct trade with Israel in May 2024 and joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Background: solidarity on the Galata Bridge, questions off it
The Galata Bridge march has become a New Year fixture, but this year’s edition drew an organized counter-narrative. Opposition figures and activists pointed to shipping data published by campaign groups showing Azerbaijani crude oil continuing to reach Israel through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline terminal at Ceyhan, despite Ankara’s trade embargo — a flow the government says it does not control, since the oil is Azerbaijani and sold onward by private traders.
The tension reflects the rally’s dual character: a genuine mass expression of grief and anger over Gaza, in a country where public sympathy for Palestinians runs deep, and a carefully staged show of support for a government positioning itself as the Muslim world’s leading voice on the issue — newly emboldened by its influence over Syria’s post-Assad transition.
What happens next
Organizers pledged to keep the New Year march going — the demonstration was repeated the following Jan. 1 — and to sustain pressure over Gaza aid and reconstruction. For Ankara, the rally’s imagery served its diplomacy as ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas ground on in Qatar and Egypt: evidence, aimed at both domestic and foreign audiences, that Turkey intends to claim a seat at any table deciding Gaza’s future.
The route itself carried symbolism. Beginning the morning at the Hagia Sophia — the Byzantine cathedral whose 2020 reconversion into a mosque Erdoğan’s supporters celebrated as a restoration of Ottoman heritage — placed the Gaza cause inside the narrative of Muslim confidence the governing movement has cultivated for years. From the mosques, columns of demonstrators converged on the bridge from both the European and Asian shores of the city, filling the span over the Golden Horn as ferries passed below. The crowd was not a government monolith: opposition voters and secular activists marched in large numbers too, as they have throughout the war, since public grief and anger over Gaza in Turkey long predates the current government — which is precisely what makes the annual rally a stage both the state and the street want to claim.
Sources: National Will Platform rally statements, Istanbul, Jan. 1, 2025; Turkish trade ministry embargo announcements (2024); Gaza Health Ministry casualty reporting; Anadolu Agency photo coverage.
