Turkish President increasingly criticizes Israel

Turkey on October 29 celebrated the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of a modern republic by first President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But instead of demonstrating the state’s achievements during this period, as happened in previous years, the authorities focused citizens’ attention on events in the Middle East. On October 28, on the eve of the holiday, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gathered a huge rally in Istanbul and once again sharply criticized Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip. According to various estimates, up to 2 million people took part in the “great Palestinian rally,” as the event was called.

The Turkish leader, in an hour-long speech, accused Tel Aviv of war crimes and called the state of Israel an occupier. Erdogan also blamed the escalating violence in the Middle East on the West. In his opinion, the perpetrators of the “massacre” in the Gaza Strip are those who provide unlimited assistance to Israel. “West, I am turning to you! Do you want a war between the cross and the crescent? Then know: this people is alive, this people stands firm. Who we were in Libya, who we were in Karabakh – we will be the same in the Middle East,” the Turkish TV channel TRT reports the president’s words.

Erdogan noted that as long as Israel “commits war crimes,” the leaders of Western states cannot even call Tel Aviv to a ceasefire. “Everyone knows that Israel is just a pawn in the region that will be sacrificed when the day is right,” he added. And the real masters of the game in the region, according to him, are those who “allow the Israeli authorities to play pranks”: “Israel cannot take a single step without looking at them.”

On the same day, Ankara supported the UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East. In total, the document was supported by 120 states, including Russia, and 45 abstained. 14 countries voted against: Israel, USA, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tonga, Fiji and Nauru.

At the same time, in his speech to citizens, the Turkish president condemned the attack by Hamas militants on Israel, which killed 1,400 Israeli citizens, but repeated that the Palestinian group is not a terrorist organization, but “freedom fighters.” Unlike other NATO states, as well as the European Union and some Gulf monarchies, Ankara maintains political contacts with Hamas. On October 21, Erdogan had a telephone conversation with the head of the political wing of the organization, Ismail Haniyeh, during which they discussed the removal of the wounded from Gaza for treatment in Istanbul.

Earlier, Erdogan also criticized Tel Aviv, speaking to members of parliament on October 25. The president said that because of the “massacre in Gaza” he had canceled planned visits to Israel. At the same time, Bloomberg, citing sources in the Turkish government, reported that the negotiations in Tel Aviv were also canceled by Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar, who expected to conclude an agreement with the Israeli authorities on the joint exploitation of gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. To resolve the crisis in the Middle East, Erdogan proposed organizing an international Palestinian-Israeli peace conference, in which, in addition to the conflicting parties, “all influential regional forces” would take part. At the same time, he called for organizing the event taking into account the mistakes that have been made “over the past 30 years from Madrid to Oslo.” We are talking about a series of bilateral meetings between the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s, as a result of which the Palestinian Authority was formed in the occupied territories, centered in Ramallah.

After sharp attacks by the Turkish authorities, Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey in order to “reassess Israeli-Turkish relations.” And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the nation, said that accusing Israeli soldiers of crimes is hypocrisy: “We are the most moral army in the world.”

Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize the State of Israel in 1949, diplomatic relations between the two countries were not always rosy. During this time, the parties cooperated closely in the military and intelligence spheres, but in 2010 Ankara severed diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv after the killing of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists by Israeli commandos aboard the so-called Freedom Flotilla during their attempt to break the naval blockade of Gaza.

Bilateral relations were restored in 2016, but two years later the two sides again expelled each other’s diplomats after the Israeli military killed several Palestinians during their protests on the Gaza-Israel border. In March 2022, relations warmed after Erdogan received Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Ankara, the first high-ranking Israeli official to visit Turkey since 2008. That same year, in August in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Turkish President and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid agreed on the full restoration of diplomatic relations between the countries. In 2022, Turkish-Israeli trade turnover amounted to $9.5 billion.

Erdogan is forced to make aggressive statements against the Israeli authorities due to pressure from religiously minded citizens, says Turkish political scientist and teacher at Ankara University Ali Emre Sucu. He noted that since the beginning of the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, demonstrations of thousands in support of the Palestinians have been taking place in many large cities in Turkey. “Many citizens have declared a boycott of Western brands; recently there was an attack on the American coffee chain Starbucks, which, according to protesters, is financing Israel’s military campaign,” the expert added. Erdogan, while criticizing Israel, also wants to strengthen his position ahead of the upcoming local elections in Turkey, which he lost last time, continues Emre Sucu. Although, according to the expert, the opposition forces also support the Palestinian resistance, their political agenda focuses on solving the country’s internal problems. In addition, the Turkish president is trying to attract the attention of Western countries to the Palestinian problem, threatening to take a proactive position in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict if the West does not support him, the expert believes.

According to Turkish political scientist Hakan Aksay, Erdogan is seeking to gain support from the Arab street in order to strengthen Turkey’s position in the Middle East. According to him, as in the Russian-Ukrainian track, Ankara is trying to take the role of a mediator in the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. “True, in this conflict Erdogan is unlikely to be able to take on this function – helping the Palestinians will not go beyond rhetoric. Let’s say that Russia is taking concrete steps in this direction, inviting a delegation of the Palestinian group Hamas to Moscow on October 26,” the expert noted.