Erdogan warns Israel on Iranian spying

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Israel would face dire consequences if it violated Turkish airspace to spy on Iran, the Turkish prime minister said in an interview with an Egyptian journalist.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Egyptian journalist Fahmi Huwaidi in Washington that the Turkish response to an Israeli incursion would resemble an "earthquake."

Israel "will receive a response equal to that of an earthquake," he said. He further warned Israeli leaders against exploiting their relationship with Ankara to "wage aggression on a third party."

The Turkish premier, however, denied rumors that Israel had violated Turkish airspace in order to conduct aerial surveillance on Iran, The Jerusalem Post reports.

Israel has suggested it would use airstrikes to take out the Iranian nuclear program. The Israeli military in 2007 struck a Syrian facility that intelligence information suggested was a nuclear reactor of North Korean design.

An Iranian military strike on the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq damaged the facility in 1980, and the Israelis destroyed the light-water reactor a year later.

Iran claims its current nuclear program is for civilian nuclear work.