The reality behind Erdoğan’s fiery rhetoric against Israel

Turkey, a NATO member state with the second largest military in the alliance after the US, is a complex regional actor in the Middle East, particularly when it comes to its relationship with Israel. Since 2003 the country has been headed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, first as a prime minister and from 2014 as the country’s president. Under Erdoğan's leadership and over the past two decades, the Turkish-Israeli relationship has faced constant challenges and has deteriorated.

The relationship reached a low point last week when Erdoğan, addressing a crowd at a local political convention, referred to the possibility of Turkish military intervention in the Gaza war, saying “we must be solid so that Israel can't do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them".

These unprecedented words sparked an immediate harsh response by Israel’s foreign minister and a series of speculations and assessments in Israel regarding whether Erdoğan was serious about the  probability of such a move. 

The consensus was that there was a considerable gap between the fiery rhetoric and the actual manifestation of the threat. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring the circumstances that have led a leader of a NATO member state that held diplomatic relations with Israel for more than 70 years to even raise such a possibility.

The main factor behind the deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations is undoubtedly President Erdoğan and his Islamist, anti-Israeli ideology. Erdoğan founded the “Justice and Development” Party (AKP) in 2001 as an Islamist political party affiliated with the “Muslim Brotherhood” movement, which holds great influence across the Middle East.

Since its inception, the AKP under Erdoğan has promoted an overtly supportive policy towards Hamas, the local Palestinian branch of the “Muslim Brotherhood”, hosting Hamas leaders, permitting and at times actively supporting, its activities in Turkey. Throughout the past two decades, those activities included raising money to support Hamas terror activities, and genuine planning and targeting of terror attacks against Israel from Turkish soil.

Israel has confronted the Turkish government over these activities numerous times, but as the Turkish authorities consider Hamas as a legitimate Palestinian political party and not a terror organization, they tend to turn a blind eye. In the few events it did act, it was only after a US intervention. 

Under Erdoğan’s regime, Turkey has tried to establish itself as a leading Sunni regional power in the Middle East, supporting and promoting other “Muslim brotherhood” branches across the region and challenging the traditional leadership positions of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 

Under this strategy, Turkey showed full support to the rise of the “Muslim Brotherhood” regime in Egypt in 2012, played a critical role in the Libyan civil war and supported the Sunni population in Syria during the prolonged civil war against the Assad regime and its Shia supporters from Iran and Lebanon. 

The brutal October 7 brutal terror attack by Hamas on southern Israel, and the war that followed it, have put Erdoğan in a sensitive position. Erdoğan never condemned Hamas’s attack and from the first days of the war threw his support behind Hamas and “its legitimate war for freedom”. Over the past month, Turkey has been delivering huge amounts of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza population, while constantly condemning Israel's military campaign and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

Israel’s disregard for the Turkish posture s over the past months demonstrated Erdoğan’s weakness in influencing the events and pushed him to further escalate his positions. By now Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Israel, joined the South African case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and stopped all exports of Turkish goods to Israel.

As the war continues and domestic Islamist public opinion pushes him to stand behind his fiery rhetoric, Erdoğan has been forced to further escalate his moves. As such, it should come as no surprise that the speech in which he suggested the possibility of military intervention was carried out in front of a crowd at a regional conference of the AKP.

The timing of Erdoğan’s remarks, shortly after the positive reactions from many American legislators to the speech in the US Congress by Israel’s prime minister, Netanyahu - who he has described as a war criminal and murderer - must have played a supporting factor as well.

In any case, it is highly unlikely that the Turkish military will directly intervene in the war in Gaza and confront the IDF operations there. A more realistic translation of Erdoğan’s statements into actions could be an attempt to supply advanced military equipment to Hamas terrorists operating in Lebanon or naval/aerial friction with the IDF in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Nevertheless, being a NATO member and a close, though problematic, ally of the US, it should be expected that Erdoğan will prefer to continue using diplomatic, commercial and legal tools before following through with any kind of a military move that would endanger Israeli interests.

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