Turkey’s anti-Israel obsession reaches new heights

Among the recent statements include a demand by Turkey to separate Jerusalem from Israel.

Turkey’s anti-Israel rhetoric has rapidly increased during the past eight days of fighting. The rhetoric targeting Israel and Jews has reached such heights that the US has condemned Turkey’s president for antisemitic comments.

While the US works to bring an end to the Hamas war against Israel, Turkey is fanning the flames.

Among its recent statements is a demand by Turkey to separate Jerusalem from Israel. The latest comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were to demand a “separate arrangement” for Jerusalem.

Since 2020, when Turkey turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, the Turkish religious and political leadership of the AKP Party, which supports Hamas, has sought to “liberate” al-Aqsa Mosque and claims it will take over Jerusalem.

Turkey has condemned Austria for supporting Israel and flying the Israeli flag. Erdogan said Austria was “trying to make Muslims pay for the Jews they subjected to genocide.” In short, the argument was that Austria was somehow punishing Muslims for the Holocaust.

Ankara then called Israel a “terror state.” In 2019, Erdogan compared Israel to Nazi Germany. At the time, the pro-Turkey stance of the Trump administration and the US State Department, some of whose officials were pro-Turkey, did not condemn the comments.

The current US administration is different, and Ankara does not get the green light to host Hamas and bash Israel as much as it used to.

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Another of Erdogan’s comments was to call on the world to stop the “aggression on al-Quds,” a reference to Jerusalem. If the world did not stop Israel, then this “brutal mentality” would harm others tomorrow, he said.

The US on Tuesday strongly condemned the recent comments emanating from Turkey. State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “We urge President Erdogan and other Turkish leaders to refrain from incendiary remarks, which could incite further violence. Antisemitic language has no place anywhere.”

He did not specify which Erdogan remarks the US considered antisemitic.

The comments by the leadership of the AKP are also represented in far-right media in Turkey. Yena Safak, a newspaper that caters to the populist Right in the country and is close to the regime, argued for Turkey to lead an Islamic alliance to attack Israel.

The alliance would include Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Malaysia and Pakistan, countries that either back Hamas or are close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Ankara had consulted with Tehran last week about how to confront Israel, and Turkey has called on the pope and others to encourage sanctions against the Jewish state.

Compared with Turkey’s rhetoric against Israel, Iran’s has been relatively muted. Turkey has become one of the most anti-Israel states in the world, and its constant anti-Israel rhetoric, fed through its state-controlled media that run the most outlandish articles about Israel, fuels antisemitism in Turkey and abroad. Turkish flags can be seen at many antisemitic rallies in Europe.

This is a relatively new phenomenon, as Ankara encourages its European diaspora to play a more aggressive role. At one rally in Vienna, when a man shouted, “Shove your Holocaust,” there was widespread cheering among the men and women present, including a man with a Turkish flag.

Reuters contributed to this report.