September 25, 2026
Join Dan Schueftan, Michael Doran, Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, and Jonathan Silver as they discuss the emerging threat Turkey poses to Israel.
Since October 7, the relationship between Turkey and Israel has reached a new low. Ankara has suspended trade with Jerusalem, sought the arrest of senior Israeli officials, and built a ring of military partnerships stretching from Syria to the Red Sea.
The Turkish-Israeli analyst Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak tells the story of why this happened in the September Mosaic essay, and explores a variety of unsettling questions: Is Turkey—as a growing number of Israeli officials now argue—becoming the next Iran? What does Erdoğan’s fervent embrace of Hamas and escalating anti-Zionist rhetoric mean for Israel’s security? Can Washington, which has remained largely silent as the relationship deteriorates, keep the two from coming to blows?
To take up these questions in more depth, we brought Yanarocak together with Dan Schueftan and Michael Doran. Schueftan believes Turkey is a major threat to Israel’s security, while Doran maintains that Turkey remains an important part of the American alliance system in the Middle East. Together with Jonathan Silver, they weighed the scale of the threat against the backdrop of Israel’s broader security doctrine and America’s role in the region.
The conversation took place on Wednesday, September 16. Watch it, or continue below to read the transcript.
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Subscribe NowSince October 7, the relationship between Turkey and Israel has reached a new low. Ankara has suspended trade with Jerusalem, sought the arrest of senior Israeli officials, and built a ring of military partnerships stretching from Syria to the Red Sea.
The Turkish-Israeli analyst Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak tells the story of why this happened in the September Mosaic essay, and explores a variety of unsettling questions: Is Turkey—as a growing number of Israeli officials now argue—becoming the next Iran? What does Erdoğan’s fervent embrace of Hamas and escalating anti-Zionist rhetoric mean for Israel’s security? Can Washington, which has remained largely silent as the relationship deteriorates, keep the two from coming to blows?
To take up these questions in more depth, we brought Yanarocak together with Dan Schueftan and Michael Doran. Schueftan believes Turkey is a major threat to Israel’s security, while Doran maintains that Turkey remains an important part of the American alliance system in the Middle East. Together with Jonathan Silver, they weighed the scale of the threat against the backdrop of Israel’s broader security doctrine and America’s role in the region.
The conversation took place on Wednesday, September 16. Watch it, or continue below to read the transcript.
Jonathan Silver:
Last night, video footage emerged out of Saudi Arabia showing an intercepted drone that was aimed at Mecca. The Saudis claim that the drone was fired by the Houthis, the Iran-backed proxy in Yemen. And now, aside from the obvious fact of Mecca being the holiest city in Islam, Mecca is also the name that labels a new defense pact that Saudi Arabia signed just over a month ago with Turkey and Pakistan.
The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement is modeled after NATO’s Article 5, which treats an attack on one as an attack on all. The first test has arrived, and its partners offered statements of condemnation and . . . not much more. Turkish and Pakistani officials have told reporters that they haven’t been asked for help, and that the alliance still needs to be institutionalized. I think this is as good a place as any to start asking what the new architecture around Israel actually looks like.
This month, our featured essay at Mosaic is by the Israeli scholar, Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, and its focus is on the relations between Turkey and Israel. As you’ll see, Hay does not treat Erdogan’s rhetoric, however inflamed, as the main story. Hay treats the rhetoric as an indication of a deeper structural shift that is visible in Turkish military positioning in Syria, in new regional frameworks that exclude Israel by design, and in that same Mecca pact that’s now facing its first real test.
Hay’s essay asks us to take seriously a scenario that Bernard Lewis put to him personally, more than a decade ago, that there’s a possibility that Turkey and Iran might one day exchange roles as the primary strategic threat to Israel.
We wanted to test this essay, and so we’re bringing Hay into conversation with two interlocutors who each have deeply considered views of Turkey, Israel, and the regional politics of the Middle East. Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He tends to read Turkey within the larger architecture of American strategy against Russia, China, and Iran. Dan Schueftan might be called the dean of Israeli strategic studies. He’s at the University of Haifa. He tends to bring a civilizational lens to these questions. Gentlemen, welcome.
Hay, I want to ask you to lay out and to recapitulate the main thesis of your essay and the evidence that you bring to substantiate it.
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak:
First of all, I’d like to thank you and Andrew Koss for facilitating the appearance of this very timely piece in Mosaic. I’m very much delighted to be the guest on this distinguished forum.
First let me provide a bit of personal background. I was born and raised in Turkey. I’m forty-two years-old and I’m bilingual [in Hebrew and Turkish]. I moved to Israel in 2006, and after finishing my studies at Tel Aviv University master’s program, I continued to my PhD studies, where, in 2012, we had the honor of hosting Professor Bernard Lewis, who was one of the most remarkable and significant historians of our time. During the lunch, I had the honor of sitting next to him, and we had a conversation in Turkish. And he shared a prophecy with me. At the time, I was unable to accept what he told me: that, one day, Turkey and Iran may switch places. That is, Iran’s radical regime may collapse and be replaced by one more friendly to Israel, and that Turkey may turn into an existential threat to the state of Israel as a result of the Islamist tendencies that he already saw on the rise in Turkey.
Now, there were some signs of growing tension with Turkey at the time, such as the infamous Davos crisis and the Mavi Marmara flotilla issue. And these were very important indicators, but still at that point I could not accept Professor Lewis’s position, and I told him as much—in a very respectful manner, of course. My core problem, today, as I write on the topic, is that—though, unfortunately, I cannot say it to him in person—I can no longer ignore or fully dispute what Bernard Lewis told me on that day in 2012.
Looking at the quality of the bilateral relations between Israel and Turkey, many researchers will tell you that the two countries had two different normalization processes, once in 2016 and then again in 2022. I wrote about this for Mosaic in 2022. But, of course, the whole situation in the Middle East was completely different.
Then, we were talking about peace, about the Abraham Accords, and we were only speaking about a future full of prosperity, and even of a potential peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But then October 7 came, and it set off a tectonic change in the Middle East that shook the Israeli-Turkish relations to their very foundations. From that moment on, we began to see a very important and, if you like, a radical change in Turkish foreign policy.
Until October 7, we had grown used to the idea that Turkish foreign policy had a pro-Palestinian attitude and that we could treat it as a sort of a known quantity. The Israeli decisionmakers were aware of it, and they could live with it. What changed after October 7 was that Turkey “upgraded” its more broadly pro-Palestinian foreign policy for a pro-Hamas policy and, simultaneously, Ankara also launched a systematic delegitimization campaign against the state of Israel. And this is something we had never seen before.
Unfortunately, it did not stop there. When the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fell, Turkey—as the main supporter of the Syrian opposition—emerged as a very important player in the new Syrian equation. As soon as the Sunni jihadist, Jolani—or, to use his proper name, Ahmed al-Sharaa—took office as the new Syrian president, Turkey began to penetrate further into Syrian politics and began to fill the vacuum that was left by Iran’s absence. Turkey’s presence in Syria turned Turkey and Israel, in an unofficial manner, into neighbors. In my opinion, this new border between the two countries is the most important factor in our equation.
Now, as an aside, when I’m analyzing the Turkish foreign policy, I often refer to the ideological foundations of Erdogan’s ideology, and I always refer to neo-Ottomanism and to his Muslim Brotherhood-oriented worldview. When we are talking about neo-Ottomanism, we cannot get divorced from history. The Ottoman Turks ruled Syria and this entire region for 401 years, including the territory of modern-day Israel. That means that we are not talking here about what we might call an “artificial player” or an external force, like Russia, that comes thousands of miles away from its homeland to Syria on some kind of adventure. No, we are talking about the successor state of the Ottoman empire which sees itself as the true owners of this land, and which has a very deep historical presence there.
With regards to explicitly Israeli-Turkish relations, we can look at the statements of, for instance, the Turkish interior minister, who, in an open manner, declared his desire to become the next governor of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, I cannot say that this was merely a statement meant for domestic consumption. Now, maybe if the Turkish administration had issued a statement that the interior minister’s speech did not represent the views of the Turkish government, I would feel relieved. However, Ankara apparently felt no need to issue a statement designed to ease tensions between the two countries. On the contrary, on every occasion, we have seen the Turkish administration conducting a systematic delegitimization campaign against the state of Israel.
That campaign is also being waged against Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials. The Turkish government has issued arrest warrants against the prime minister and the minister of defense, but not only against the elected officials of the Israeli government who might be replaced in the future with the new Israeli elections. If the warrants were only against elected officials, then we could see this as a move specifically targeting the current government, and we could argue that if the current government would be replaced by another government, then we might see a window for a future normalization.
However, when you view the list of Israelis sanctioned by Turkey, you also see Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff. From an Israeli perspective, I can tell you that the Israeli chief of staff is considered nonpartisan, above politics, which means that even if Gadi Eisenkot, or Naftali Bennett, or Yair Lapid were to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, Eyal Zamir would remain the chief of staff. So, from my perspective, this decision is a very strong Turkish statement that they are not interested in mending fences with the state of Israel, regardless of which party runs the government.
I would also say that this is a two-way street. I do not think that the next Israeli administration—even if the next Israeli prime minister is someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu—would change Israel’s foreign policy vis-a-vis Turkey, given the fact that Turkey has already penetrated into Syria, has already signed military defense agreements with the Syrian army, is arming the Syrian army, is increasingly demonstrating its presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea, and has built a major presence in the Horn of Africa.
One of the most important things that it is poisoning the relationship is the current Hamas presence in Turkey. According to the Israeli press, some of the Hamas operations in Judea and Samaria are remotely controlled by the Hamas cells which are located in Turkey. So, on top of the geostrategic challenges just discussed, this is a clear sign that the Turkish side is not interested in lowering the tension. Instead, when I’m looking at official statements of the Turkish leadership, I see that they categorize the state of Israel as the primary threat against Turkey’s national security.
The first ever statement by Turkish president Recep Erdogan that referred to Israel as a threat was made on November 2023, only a month after the October 7 attacks. It hardly bears repeating that it was the Hamas terrorist organization that started this war when they penetrated into the sovereign borders of the state of Israel. They kidnapped Israeli citizens from their homes. They raped and killed and kidnapped Israeli civilians. Israel had no choice but to declare war on Hamas. And it was in this context that Erdogan declared Israel a national security threat to Turkey.
Then, in October 2024, there was an important, closed parliamentary session in Turkey. According to some leaks in the Turkish press, it was reported that, during that session, the Turkish foreign minister and the Turkish defense minister briefed the parliament about the upcoming Israeli threat. There is also what is known as the Turkish Red Book, the national-security policy document that classifies and categorizes national-security threats against Turkey. Again, through intentional leakages to the press, we know that Israel was included in this document. To add further examples, in April 2025, right after the Israeli airstrikes against Syrian bases in Palmyra, Tiya, and Hama, the Turkish foreign ministry declared Israel not only as a threat to countries in the region, but also as a direct threat to Turkey itself.
Last but not least, after the Israeli airstrikes targeting the Abu al-Duhur airbase in August, the Turkish administration once again tagged and labeled Israel as a national-security threat. This Abu al-Duhur air strike is a very important milestone. Why is it important? Because, for the first time in the Israeli history, Turkish military deployment in Syria was declared openly as a national-security threat for the state of Israel by an official tweet that was shared by the Israeli prime minister’s office. For the first time ever, the two states are now officially labeling each other as threats.
Jonathan Silver:
I think that’s a very clear framing of the state of affairs between the two states, but there’s a very big element that I want to make sure we place on the table. In addition to this escalating ladder that you’re describing of increasingly overt rhetorical antagonisms between the two nations, your essay also traces things that Turkey has built over the last couple of years. There is the informal grouping of Syria’s neighboring states that excludes Israel. There is a newer four-country partnership with Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. And then there’s the formal defense pact that we were talking about before. Your argument is that these structures amount to a new encirclement strategy. I’d like you to explain that and then see if you can persuade us that it is intended to be an encirclement strategy on the part of Ankara, rather than merely being the way it’s perceived in Jerusalem.
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak:
In a nutshell, starting with 2024, we began to see that the Turkish administration engage more and more with Syria. And, in March 2025, they came with a new platform called the Neighbors of Syria Initiative using the threat of Islamic State as a fig leaf to justify the launch of the project. Well, Israel is also a neighbor of Syria, and has world-class counter-terrorism capabilities, but it was not invited to this initiative. Instead, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan were invited.
As a slight digression, if we look at the statements from the same event, we should note also that the statements highlight a very important matter for the United States. They openly say that they do not want to see any kind of external military force in the Middle East, which is a very clear message to the United States. This fits easily within current American foreign policy—as we know, the Trump administration wants to delegate international security matters onto the shoulders of its allies, and the Americans do not appear to want to be involved in future conflicts abroad, especially in the Middle East. We can also see the same trend in the latest NATO summit. This American mood very much strengthens Turkey’s hands vis-à-vis the European countries, and in the Middle East.
Now, coming back to the Middle East, Turkey did not stop with the Neighbors of Syria. Turkey also began to launch military drills with Egypt and tried to persuade the Egyptians to launch another mechanism together with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This regional force was meant to act as a platform to be upgraded into the Mecca Agreement. So far, because of the mistrust between Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian president, and Mr. Erdogan—and also thanks to Egypt’s very close relationship with the United Arab Emirates, and with Cyprus and Greece, and its very delicate relationship with the state of Israel—Egypt chose not to become a part of this agreement. Instead we have Turkey as the conventional force, Saudi Arabia as the religious and economic force, and Pakistan as the nuclear force, coming together under this Mecca agreement.
If you ask the Pakistanis why they signed this treaty, they would most likely tell you that they wanted to deter the Indians. If you ask the Turks, they would most likely say that they wanted to deter the Israelis. And if you ask the Saudis, of course they would tell you that it was to deter the Houthis and the Iranians. In light of ongoing events between the Houthis and Saudis, this military alliance might be seen as what many in Israel are calling a “toothless alliance.” But I am very skeptical of that position. Despite the lack of concerted action against the Houthis, when we look at the very essence of this agreement, we see a regional defense pact putting Islam at the very center. In my opinion, Israel and India are the two states that can be considered as non-Muslim opponents of this Mecca agreement, and its primary reasons for existing.
In Israel, after October 7, I don’t think that we have the luxury to look at the pact and its apparent toothlessness and say the whole thing is just lip service, and that we can functionally ignore it. I think we no longer have such a luxury. And this is why the Israeli decisionmakers have to think about the Turkish statements in a very serious manner. Compared to Iran, Turkey is much closer to Israel. Turkey has already penetrated into Syria. Turkey also has a very strong navy. On the other hand, Turkey is a member of NATO, and this is a very important mechanism to calm things down.
When I see, in Turkish, which is my mother tongue, the language of hatred and indoctrination against Israelis and the Israeli state, as well as a systematic attempt at delegitimization, I’m very concerned for the future. This is something that has become normalized in Turkey, and I think that it is one of the most important problems standing in the way of relations between the two countries.
Even so, against the prophecy of Bernard Lewis, I would still like to see things from a positive perspective, and I still want to be optimistic, since these two states have still never declared open hostilities against each other. This long-standing peace is something precious that must be preserved. It is in the Israeli national interest to have proper relations with Turkey, and I can tell you—as an Israeli—that the Israeli people and the Israeli government do not want to turn Turkey into an active enemy. Israel has enough enemies. Jerusalem is not interested in adding another one to this unfortunate list. From Jerusalem’s perspective, we want to see the expansion of the Abraham Accords. Instead, we are seeing this Mecca agreement, which, in my opinion, is the antithesis of the Abraham Accords.
Jonathan Silver:
You leave us, Hay, therefore, with a place to begin reflecting on the role that America might play as a buffer between these two nations, and I know that that’s something that Mike Doran has thought about deeply.
Michael Doran:
First of all, thank you, Hay, for writing this very provocative essay.
I’m struck by a few things. For one thing, I can’t disagree with some of Hay’s central findings—for example, that, since October 7, there’s been a major change in tone wherein the Turkish government is increasingly describing Israel as a strategic threat. I would say even as the strategic enemy to be countered. We’re hearing a level of Islamic rhetoric and a kind of civilizational hostility that we haven’t heard before—certainly, that I have never heard before. As a result, I’m starting to fear that this has moved from rhetoric to become an actual organizing principle of foreign policy. I can’t disagree with any of that. And, obviously, Turkish influence around the region is also growing significantly. But, having said all that, I still understand it in a very different framework than Hay does.
To me, his article reads like the statement for the prosecution at the beginning of a trial. All of the evidence that the defense would bring to the table is not there and is not recognized. I’ll just throw out a few categories of evidence that I didn’t see in the article. One is all of the areas in which the expansion of Turkish power has helped Israel.
That isn’t to say that I disagree with Hay’s position that we can’t treat the anti-Israeli statements coming from President Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials as just lip service. He’s 100-percent correct. No way that we can argue with that. But to what extent is this a statement of the considered strategy of Turkish foreign policy, when all of the key leaders are sitting together and talking about what their priorities are and what they are trying to achieve, and to what extent is it political speech that is adjacent to strategy. I think it is more the latter. So, what kind of evidence is missing?
The toppling of Assad by Turkey was of tremendous strategic benefit to Israel. Because Assad was the closest ally of Iran in the region, Syria was the number-one entry point for the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] into the Eastern Mediterranean. It was a huge blow, not just to Assad and anyone allied with him in Syria, but also to Hizballah in Lebanon. It really shifted the balance of power to the advantage of Israel. And that wasn’t simply incidental. The Turks have been a significant counterbalance to Iranian and Russian power in Syria since forever, but especially since 2016 when the Iranians and the Russians intervened on behalf of Assad. I could give other examples, as well, where I think Turkish power is working to the advantage of Israel, regardless of the way it is packaged.
The second issue is identifying the priorities of Turkish foreign policy. I know that the rhetoric is very disturbing. But, if you start listing the top priorities of President Erdogan in foreign policy, where is countering Israel on that list? I don’t think it’s number one, I don’t think it’s number two, and I don’t think it’s number three. Number one is the PKK, number two is Ukraine, and perhaps number three is staying in power, then the economy, and so on.
Another category that I think is missing here is the type of power that Turkey is. And Hay mentioned it to a certain extent when he’s saying it’s a member of NATO, but it goes way beyond that. If we’re going to put in the frame that Turkey is the new Iran, well, it’s not going to be the new Iran because it’s a trading power. It’s very much part of the capitalist world economy, but it’s especially tied to the West. It’s a NATO power. Turkey is in incredibly bad shape right now, and President Erdogan is very worried about the economy. He doesn’t want to take on a new conflict that’s going to endanger his position through the disaffection of voters because of jobs, for example.
I’ll just make one more point here, but I look at this from an American point of view. And the United States is not going to abandon Turkey as an ally. Turkey is too important to the American system globally in Europe as a counterbalance to the Russians. The Turks are staunch allies on Ukraine, for example. That means that Israel has to be very careful about the rhetoric it adopts toward Turkey, because of the effect that it has in Washington, in influencing American officials to understand what their role in the game is.
One of the strongest parts of Hay’s essay that I agreed with—I think almost every word—was how he was disturbed by the absence of the Americans in attempting to play a mediating role. I can’t emphasize enough how important I think this is. The job of the United States is to mediate. If Hay’s view of Turkey is primarily as an ideological actor—that’s how I would summarize it in one sentence, and what I am arguing against—it has the effect of minimizing or blinding us to areas where we might actually cooperate together or foster cooperation. And it blinds us to the opportunities where concerted action by the United States might actually mitigate things.
I think something else that’s entirely missing from the essay is all of the steps that Israel has taken that have confirmed the Turks in their worst interpretation of Israeli behavior, including Israeli statements. The Turks don’t understand the Israelis, and the Israelis don’t understand the Turks. Now, I’m not suggesting that this rising tension, rivalry, whatever you want to call it, between Ankara and Jerusalem is purely because of a misunderstanding. In some ways, I think they understand each other very well, and they don’t like each other. But there is also in the mix a great deal of misunderstanding.
I talked to a senior Turkish official in September 2023, just before October 7. This is back at the United Nations General Assembly, when Prime Minister Netanyahu met with President Erdogan, and it looked like there was going to be a reconciliation between the two. And, by the way, that is one of the reasons that October 7 took place. We always talk about Saudi-Israeli normalization, but from an Iranian point of view, there was also Israeli-Turkish normalization, and that was equally disturbing.
I mentioned the reconciliation to this senior official. I asked if we could start to expect Israel and Turkey to cooperate or act in parallel to counter Iranian moves around the region. And he said to me, bluntly, “No.” I asked why, and he said that, while there had been improvement in Turkish-Israeli relations, Israeli policy was still objectively anti-Turkish. His view was that, as long as that was the case, Turkey would not have any kind of cooperation along the lines that I was describing. I said, “What do you mean, objectively anti-Turkish?” And he said, “For example, the Israelis conduct exercises with the Greeks in the Aegean. We regard that as a hostile act.” He said that exercises in the Mediterranean are not hostile because there are many countries that border the Mediterranean, and there are lots of different interests at play in that sea. The Aegean Sea, however, in his view was divided between Turkey and Greece. He said “If you’re in the Aegean with the Greeks, you’re doing something against the Turks, and we will respond.”
I don’t think any Israeli was aware of this, and I don’t think they’re aware that some of the moves, not all of them, but some of the moves that the Turks are doing are in reaction to things that the Israelis are doing around the region. Increasingly, Jerusalem is sending a signal to the region that, if you’ve got a problem with President Erdogan, come call us. We’re here to help. This is exactly the wrong signal the Israelis should be sending the Turks and the Americans. The signal they should be sending them is that in the areas where we have profound disagreements, we will oppose you tooth and nail. But everywhere else, we are looking to find either cooperation, or if that’s not possible, just to get out of each other’s way.
Jonathan Silver:
Mike, that was informative and provocative in all the right ways. Now, I would like to bring Dan Schueftan into the conversation. Dan, how did you react to Hay’s essay and his follow-up remarks?
Dan Schueftan:
Well, I would like to go far beyond the Israeli-Turkish issue into a much broader picture and then come back to the Israeli part.
I think the ideological, cultural, and strategic elements are very closely intertwined. Turkey seeks regional hegemony, and, by the way, in a much broader sense than the Middle East as we usually treat it. And it has the same problem with Israel that Iran has. The only power in the Middle East that is both strong enough and determined enough to prevent Iranian or Turkish hegemony is Israel. And, therefore, they’re both against Israel from different standpoints. I’m not suggesting they’re working together, but it’s the same logic. And I don’t think that the ideological is separate from the political.
By the way, I don’t think that Turkey’s attitude towards Israel is based on thinking about policy. It used to be, but now, as Hay’s article demonstrates very well, it goes very deep into the cultural element and even the identity element of Turkey to be against Israel, against the Jews, and for the Muslim Brothers.
Now, Israel is playing a zero-sum game with Turkey on one enormously important issue, and that’s everything going west from Asia, and I mean not only goods and oil, but also cyber. Will it go through Israel or will it go through Turkey and a Syria controlled by Turkey? Turkey wants to put itself in a position where everything that Europe needs must go through Turkey, and I mean for example energy coming from the Caucasus through Turkey to Europe, gas coming from the Middle East, all wanting to get to Europe, so that everybody would be dependent on the Turks. Likewise, they want the cyber cables not to go through Israel, but to go either through Turkey or through Syria under Turkish control.
It is about the control over the movement of East-West trade and information, and it’s either Turkey or Israel. They consider the possibility of Israel bypassing the dependency on Turkey as something that undermines their position. This also explains why they’re trying to dominate the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Which, in turn, is the reason why Israel, Cyprus, and Greece work together. Even Egypt has an interest to work with Israel, Cyprus, and Greece against the Turks, because, again, this is a zero-sum game.
If you look at what is happening in the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood is the greatest threat to the Egyptian regime, the Jordanian regime, and to regimes as far away as Morocco. In the Gulf, it is the major disrupting force, and is actually preventing the Arabs from joining the 20th century, let alone the 21st century. And Turkey is on the side of the Muslim Brothers.
We have a problem because this is not just Erdogan. Something happened inside Turkey, including the establishment of a new middle class that is much closer to the Erdogan system. I think that if Erdogan goes away—and here again, the article by Hay I think gives us a lot of information that supports this idea—that it goes beyond Erdogan and beyond his immediate followers.
Now, the question is, who is on which side? There should be an alliance trying to check Turkey between Israel and Europe, but you can’t trust Europe to take care of its own interest. Let me give you only one example. I think it is an enormous danger for Germany that, in recent elections, the proportion of Turks in Germany—who, by the way, used to be the most assimilated element of the population coming from a non-European background—who support Erdogan is higher than the proportion of Turks who support Erdogan inside Turkey itself. That’s one example of what has become a constant danger inside Europe.
I think the fact that the Turks can work with the Russians—as they did when they imported Russian S-400 air-defense systems in 2019—demonstrates how, from a NATO point of view, Turkey is a very problematic ally. At the same time, NATO needs Turkey because it has the largest army. And the Europeans always want somebody who’s not really European to fight for them, either the Americans or the Turks, because they’re not willing to fight for themselves. I’m not undermining the significance of Turkey for Europe and for NATO, but remember that this is the only member of NATO that is not a democratic country, and, when it had elements of democracy, Erdogan undermined these elements. Even so, you cannot trust the Europeans to take care of their own business, and they are completely incapable of defending themselves.
This leads me to believe that the most important ally of Israel is India because of the alliance between the Turks and the Saudis and the Pakistanis. And, further, I don’t think that the Indians want to be completely dependent on Turkey when it comes to their goods making it to Middle Eastern markets. And one day—not at the moment because the Egyptians and others are too frightened—but one day even countries like Egypt can become allies precisely because of Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood that has gone even to the point of supporting Hamas. I think that is the basis for possible future alliances within the Middle East with countries that are against the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now, all of this doesn’t mean that we are going to war with Turkey. All of this doesn’t mean that it must reach the military field. But I disagree with Michael that bringing down the Assad regime was positively important for Israel. Remember, under Assad, Syria was disintegrated, and did not pose any kind of immediate danger to Israel. If you unite Syria with the Turkish hegemony; if you build a very strong Syrian army, if you curtail Israel’s freedom in the skies over Syria in the direction of Iran, when we have to settle the nuclear element in Iran, and when the only way to settle it is to maintain the credible threat of Israel taking military action—then, in this case, Turkey has become much more of a problem than an asset.
Now, if I’m wrong, and Sharaa is some kind of person, first of all, who can be brought to an agreement with Israel, and second, who will not give Turkey too much control over Syria, I’ll be delighted. But you must remember that, at this moment, we don’t know if either of those is the case. Therefore, at the moment, I see the collapse of Assad and his replacement by a more unified Syria more as a danger than as an asset.
Wherever you look at an Israeli interest, you will very often find that Turkey is on the other side. Again, this is not a predetermined reality. This formula can change, but it’s very difficult to change because the very extreme hostility to Israel is very deeply embedded in Turkish society. This was not the case at the end of the 20th century. This is the product of Erdogan, but it went beyond Erdogan. I don’t expect any kind of rapport between Turkey and Israel, even if they agree. And here I agree with Michael, the United States should be very heavily involved in it. The United States should bring them closer.
Jonathan Silver:
Dan, pause there for one second. Mike, I know that you need to go shortly. Do you want to intervene quickly and then we’ll give it back to Dan and Hay?
Michael Doran:
You’ve got to give me more opportunity to talk. I’ll never say no.
I think that Dan Schueftan just mentioned something very important, which is the interest of Sharaa. He clearly is not a Turkish puppet. He clearly has his own agenda. I think we can see that he has his own aspirations. Now, he is very dependent on the Turks. He has very good relations with them. He’s not going to do anything to antagonize them. But he wants autonomy there.
Now, it’s important to recognize that all of these things that Hay and Dan have presented as part of an encirclement of Israel are policies that at worst have a multifactorial purpose. For example, I was in Israel when Ferdinand Marcos fell in the Philippines and I turned on Israeli radio, and the first question that news presenter asked the expert on the broadcast was, is this good or bad for the Jews? Nobody else in the world was thinking that the fall of Marcos had anything to do with the Jews, one way or one way or another.
Now, obviously, the increasing hostility that Turkey is expressing toward Israel and the increasing presentation of Israel as Turkey’s central strategic threat, and so on, all have a lot to do with the Jews. But I don’t think that the Mecca Pact in itself has anything to do with the Jews one way or another. As you yourself, Jon, acknowledged at the beginning of this conversation, Saudi Arabia has now come under attack. And where are its purported allies? This pact is a diplomatic initiative that is masquerading as a military alliance. It’s never going to function as a full-blown military alliance. It’s always going to be a diplomatic alignment. What is being negotiated in the world today is the post-Iran Middle East, and it is being negotiated before the Iranian regime topples. As I see it, that’s what’s going on.
I think Dan hit the nail on the head when he said that Israel has a huge amount of influence, particularly but not only in Washington, on what that new Middle Eastern order is going to look like. In that regard, then, Israel is objectively a rival of the Turks. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a zero-sum game. And it doesn’t mean that every move that the Turks are making is with an eye to countering Israel. It’s very important to remember this. That is objectively the fact. They have so many other fish to fry, and if we assume that everything they’re doing is designed to counter Israel, then we’re going to miss the enormous opportunities that this moment has created. Opportunities for Israel and for the United States.
Jonathan Silver:
Hay, why don’t you react to some of the things that Mike just put on the table?
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak:
First of all, I would like to mention two more important things from my article. A month after October 7, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, made a very important statement in Cairo. He said that while the U.S. can function as a guarantor state for the state of Israel, Turkey may function as a guarantor state for the Palestinians.
For those who are not familiar, I would like to explain—in a nutshell—what guarantor means in the Turkish context. In 1960, when the Republic of Cyprus was born, a very important agreement was signed among the United Kingdom, Greece, and Turkey. And that particular treaty, the Treaty of Guarantee, provided these three states the authority to intervene in the affairs of Cyprus. When, in 1974, there was a military coup in Cyprus, the Turks interpreted this as a direct violation of the guarantor agreement, and they launched a military intervention. Now, I brought up this example because it helps us to understand what Turkish officials mean when they use the term “guarantor.”
If we follow the analogy, we see that, very shortly after the eruption of the October 7 war, the Turkish administration has declared their position to be that they are possibly justified in using force against the state of Israel in some future situation where they view Israel as violating a peace agreement with the Palestinians. By doing that, they are downgrading the status of the state of Israel to one on equal footing with Hamas, and they are elevating themselves to the status of equals with the United States. This is the first thing.
For the second thing, I would like to refer to Erdogan’s very important statement. He said that Turkey should be very strong so that Israel cannot do what it’s doing in Gaza. He said that whatever Turkey did in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Libya, they may also do against the state of Israel. Well, when I’m looking at the Turkish-Syrian military agreements, the cooperation agreements, I can definitely see the same type of things we saw in their cooperation with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey provided UAVs and military technology to Azerbaijan so that they could defeat the Armenians.
In Libya, Turkey provided military aid and ammunition and they sent Syrian militias to strengthen the hands of government of national record. I recommend that people watch the BBC documentary Turkey’s Ghost Ships—it’s something that must be watched in order to understand the depth of the Turkish foreign policy in Libya.
When I hear Erdogan’s statement, it suggests to me that while Turkey is not posturing to confront the state of Israel by itself, it is posturing itself to arm Israel’s enemies. And, currently, Turkey is arming the new Syrian administration.
As long as the Turkish delegitimization campaign against the state of Israel continues, and as long as it continues against Prime Minister Netanyahu, I cannot see a reason for the Israeli government to calm down.
Michael, you mentioned that Israel made a mistake when Jerusalem initiated the rapprochement with Greece and Cyprus. The core architect of this alignment with Greece and Cyprus is Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan, with his own hands, pushed Israel into the arms of Greece and Cyprus. You cannot expect Israel to stay alone in this very wild neighborhood without trying to form alliances when we see how Turkey is forging new alliances that imperil Israel. You cannot expect Israel to sit by itself and to pray for the future, merely trying to appease Turkey in the hopes that Ankara will accept some kind of Israeli rapprochement in the future.
We watch as Turkey and Hamas are growing more intertwined. We see Turkey imposing naval sanctions against Israel. We see Turkey imposing trade sanctions against Israel. You mentioned the importance of trade, but we see that Turkey has imposed a trade embargo against Israel. Yes, some of the Turkish products can still be seen in Israeli markets, but they are coming via third countries because money is like water. It finds its way. But it doesn’t mean that we have a proper relationship. If you would like to have a proper relationship with two countries, you have to have people-to-people relations.
Where are all of the flights from Ben-Gurion to Istanbul? Numerous Turkish airlines used to run the route, and lately even Israeli airlines had begun running new lines to Turkey. Where are those lines, now? They’ve evaporated. They’ve disappeared. Where are the people-to-people relations?
Michael, you said that the priorities of Turkish foreign policy, in order, are the PKK, Ukraine, and then maintaining Erdogan’s power. As I see it, the most important objective of Turkish foreign policy, and of Erdogan himself, is survival. It’s not number three, it’s number one. Unfortunately, Israel is the built-in element of that strategy. In political theory, there is a concept called rallying around the flag. For example, in the face of an external enemy, real or imagined, a people will forget about other pressing problems—like the devaluation of the Turkish lira, or like unemployment, for example in the Turkish case—and unite against that enemy.
Dan Schueftan:
Let me say something before Michael goes. I very strongly agree with Michael that undermining Israel is not the cause of every action that Turkey is taking. I completely agree, analytically, that there are many things that they’re doing that have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. But, from an Israeli point of view, since Turkey is an enemy on so many fronts, whatever strengthens Turkey is a problem for Israel, because a strong Turkey is a problem for Israel. And, by the way, there are some things that Israel does because of Turkey. For example, Israel’s activity in Somaliland is, to some extent, because of Turkey. The point is that you don’t need every move of your enemy to be directed against you in order for you to be interested in checking his strength.
The other point on which I agree with Michael is that Sharaa is not Turkish puppet. This is true. Perhaps Michael knows about Sharaa more than I do. I did not study jihad. I did not spend years studying what is happening in these organizations from which Sharaa came. But the sole fact that he doesn’t want to be the puppet of Turkey doesn’t mean that Turkey cannot do things in Syria to strengthen Sharaa which will also weaken the ability of Israel to care for its most important strategic objectives, say, in Iran.
So, again, you don’t have to have the explicit intention to harm Israel in order for there to be strategic problems for Israel. It can be objectively a problem in the absence of malice. On these two analytical things I agree with Michael. And now, Michael, after you’ve heard me agree with you, now you can go.
Michael Doran:
I do have to sign off, but I’ll just end with a couple of final words, and leave you with some provocative things to think about. Two things.
One is that Hay said that President Erdogan pushed Prime Minister Netanyahu into the arms of Greece. I don’t think this is true. I mean, obviously, it’s one of the reasons why the Israelis are doing what they’re doing, but I think the Israelis need to ask themselves a question: how many powers have won wars in the modern era by allying with the Greeks? That number is going to be very, very small. The military value of a relationship with Greece is not nil, but it should not be exaggerated. The Greeks have relations with the Turks. They have good relations with the Turks. There’s tension. There are lots of areas in which they are hostile to each other, but there are lots of areas in which they cooperate.
For example, there’s a pipeline going from Azerbaijan to Italy that goes through Turkey and then on to Greece. Now, if I were to propose today to the Israelis that they should build a pipeline from Israel to Turkey, many Israelis would say, no, this will harm relations with our Greek allies. And indeed, the Greek allies would protest. I think it’s very important not—Hay is signaling disagreement, but Hay, I have the advantage here. These are my final words, and then I’m running away. You can disagree with me after I leave—it’s very important not to be more Greek than the Greeks. One of the reasons the Greeks are pulling the Israelis into the Eastern Mediterranean is to is to strengthen some of their claims about the balance of power, about the distribution of forces in the Eastern Mediterranean in Washington. The Greeks are trying to strengthen their own claim with the Americans. And I think these are areas in which the Israeli interest is not served. It’s in Israel’s interest either, in my view, to tilt toward the Turks or just stay out of the whole thing. Why bring all of these extra agendas into the into the Israeli-Turkish relationship?
To Dan’s point that there are objective threats where it’s not necessarily a question of intentions—for instance, that just the mere fact of Turkish presence in Syria can be a threat, regardless of what the Turks are thinking about doing there now—I totally agree with that as an abstract statement. However, I think if we look at what’s happening on the ground today—both in terms of the distribution of forces and in terms of Sharaa’s intentions and attitudes towards Iran, towards Turkey, towards Israel, and so on—there’s a lot there to work with, and what I’m cautioning against is Dan and Hay’s civilizational, cultural, ideological understanding of why all these actors are doing what they are doing.
Those actors are quite happy to make statements that put their actions comfortably in that category, but they have a lot of things going on, a lot of agendas that they are pursuing that have absolutely nothing to do with Israel or the Jews, and a clever, focused, well-informed Israeli policy can find lots of opportunities for Israel in that mix.
I’ll leave you with two more thoughts. One is if you ask President Trump how he got the hostages released from Gaza, he will tell you that President Erdogan helped him significantly on that score. The Turks themselves are aware of that, and they wonder why they don’t get credit in Jerusalem for what they di, there.
Secondly, just let’s reflect on Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, in the early 2000s. Remember Dore Gold’s book, Hatred’s Kingdom? Saudi Arabia was very rhetorically hostile to Israel from its founding all the way through 9/11. It still doesn’t have normal relations with Israel. You can say it has carried out policies that were overtly and directly hostile to Israel—for example, the oil embargo in 1973. But, for the most part, the Saudis were a secondary consideration when Israelis were thinking about the real threats to them.
Israel is a strange power in that it has only 10 million people, and yet it has many characteristics that really only the great powers have. In some areas, like cyber, it’s even a superpower. And I think it’s in a strange or an interesting or moment in its development as a power, in that it has not developed a lot of the concepts and the equanimity that great powers have, while it has developed some of the attributes of a great power. There need to be categories other than just ally and enemy. There are rivals, there are frenemies, there are countries in which you have one set of relations over the table, another set of relations under the table, and I think that the Israelis should be working to advance their repertoire, and get more keys on the keyboard than just one or two. That would be my number one counsel to the Israelis: a little bit of equanimity here.
There’s a serious challenge. There’s no doubt about it, but let’s not exaggerate it. And I’m sorry—well, I’m not that sorry—I have to have the last word and then run away.
Jonathan Silver:
Mike, thank you. Dan, let me give you the chance to offer your concluding thoughts as well, and then Hay, as the author of the essay, you’ll have the last word.
Dan Schueftan:
First of all, unfortunately, we have seen in the Middle East a lot of countries take very critical decisions, sometimes fatal decisions, based on ideological commitments, and in spite of the fact that they knew how terrible the consequences would be. Let me give you an example. I don’t think that Gamal Abdul Nasser was motivated by hate to attack Israel, but he realized that having the ideological stature of having liberated Palestine was essential to his position of leading the Arab world. For a long time, he managed to speak very dramatically and in a very radical way about Israel, but he prevented war at least between 1957 and 1967, a decade where he didn’t want to go to war. He prevented the Arab world from going to war until 1967, but his ideological commitment made him vulnerable to Syrian pressures to take steps that led to the 1967 War.
King Hussein of Jordan would have wanted peace with Israel. He would have been in a position to sing Hatikvah in his pajamas every evening because the very existence of Jordan as an independent state depends on a strong Israel. Nevertheless, in 1967, he made war against Israel.
Egypt today has a vital interest in opening the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Egypt is literally starving because it cannot get income from the Suez Canal thanks to the Houthis. And yet, because of an ideological commitment to the cause of Palestine and because the Houthis present themselves as the ultimate champions of Palestine, the Egyptians can’t do anything about it. For that reason, saying it’s just ideology is not taking seriously enough into consideration what we have seen with the power of ideologies in the Middle East.
But with Turkey, it is not just ideology. In order to promote its position as a regional hegemon, it needs to weaken Israel. When it comes to where would goods go in the Mediterranean: will they go to Israel or to Turkey or to a Turkish controlled country? This is a vital interest of Turkey, and it is a vital interest of Israel. And here we do have a zero-sum game. Whatever is good for one of the parties is bad for the other party. So, I would not underestimate ideology, but I would certainly not underestimate the clash of vital interests—the vital interests of Syria, the vital interests of Turkey, and the vital interests of Israel.
Jonathan Silver:
Hay, would you like to take the final word?
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak:
First, I would point to a paradox in Dan Schueftan’s position. Earlier, he agreed with Michael that Ahmed al-Sharaa is not a puppet of Erdogan. By the way, I disagree with this. And I think Michael Doran himself described Sharaa as desiring “autonomy” instead of “independence.” I think he used the word autonomy because he, too, is aware that Sharaa is not independent at all. And now, Dan Schueftan just he referred to Syria as a Turkish-controlled country. The same Dan Schueftan is also referring to Sharaa as not a puppet of Turkey.
So, Dan if you could kindly clarify this. Maybe it’s not popular to admit that Sharaa is a puppet of Turkey, but I think that it is the case.
Dan Schueftan:
Hay, I don’t know if Sharaa will turn out as a puppet or not, okay? I agreed that we don’t know where he will go. But it doesn’t matter. Even if he’s not a puppet, even if he just has very strong relations with Turkey, or if he will be under the influence of Turkey without being a puppet—it is bad enough for Israel even in those alternate forms. I don’t think we have a disagreement when it comes to Sharaa, but let me add something very important.
One of the major reasons why I think that an independent Palestinian state would be a catastrophe today—you must remember that ideologically for many years, I thought it was best to have no presence in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, to leave most of it, so my motivation is not territorial—is that if you have an independent Palestinian state, you will have Turkish forces invited into it, and then there will be terrorism against Israel from the Palestinian state, and hostile actions, and the Turkish presence will prevent retribution, and will prevent deterrence by Israel. The hostility of Turkey is one of the important reasons why, in the present state of affairs, Israel cannot accept any kind of Palestinian state.
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak:
Okay, thank you very much.
To return to my final remarks, Michael Doran also mentioned the very important role that Turkey played in the freeing of the Israeli hostages. Of course, I’m very pleased that all of our hostages are back home, but we should also concentrate on the side effects. With our own hands, we created a Hamas leadership in Turkey. Then, Turkey legitimized the existence of this Hamas leadership on Turkish soil through reference to its value in securing this hostage deal. And now, they are shielding the Hamas terrorists on Turkish soil. I’m very grateful that our hostages are back, and we shouldn’t ignore Turkish facilitation of that result, but neither can we ignore the very important fact of their ongoing complicity in keeping Hamas and its leadership alive.
And last, but not least, we should also speak about Lebanon. The Turkish president also expressed a desire to send Turkish forces to the Israeli border with Lebanon to replace the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that will very soon see the end of its mandate. To emphasize the point, the Turkish president is proposing that the Turkish Armed Forces replace this UNIFIL force to provide peace and security for the Lebanese.
Now, why see a Turkish presence in northern Syria that is trying to edge further and further to the south of Syria. Now, they want to dispatch their soldiers to Lebanon. They also claim to want to send their soldiers into the Gaza Strip as part of the so-called peacekeeping force. I mean, why should Turkish troops be on every Israeli border? This is the core question.
Iran formed rings of fire with illegitimate terrorist organizations. Turkey is much more complex than Iran. It’s a much stronger state. It’s more a more internationally legitimate country when compared with Iran. It is integrated into the West. And Turkey is making these alliances with other legitimate countries. When you ask them why they are making these alliances, they respond that they want to have a prosperous Middle East. Fine. If you really want a prosperous Middle East, then why not include Israel and expand this in the spirit of the Abraham Accords? This is the question.
Jonathan Silver:
Gentlemen, thank you for being with us and for giving us your wisdom.
Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak is a Turkey expert at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies (MDC) at Tel Aviv University and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS). He received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University’s School of History and currently teaches at Tel Aviv University and Shalem Academic College. He is also the editor of Turkeyscope: Insights on Turkish Affairs.
Jonathan Silver is the editor of Mosaic, the host of the Tikvah Podcast, the Warren R. Stern Senior Fellow of Jewish Civilization, and the Senior Vice President and Chief Programming Officer of Tikvah.
Michael Doran is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute. He was previously a senior director in the National Security Council, a senior advisor in the State Department, and a deputy assistant secretary of defense. He is the author of Ike's Gamble and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Free Press, Mosaic, Tablet, and Commentary.
Dan Schueftan is director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa and head of the university's International Graduate Program in National Security. For over four decades he has served as a consultant to Israeli decision-makers and to the top echelon of Israel's defense and foreign-policy establishments. He has published extensively on contemporary Middle Eastern history and Arab-Israeli relations.
