The Predator on the Bosphorus: How Turkey Is Turning from a Hostile State into an Enemy

Several years ago, I sat in a quiet café in Ankara with my host, a Turkish businessman. He smiled, took a sip of his thick black coffee, and whispered: “Don’t get worked up about Erdoğan’s speeches on television. Here, rhetoric is for the ballot box, and business is for the real world.” The years passed, the grounds at the bottom of the coffee cup settled, and that optimistic assessment faded away. The coffee remained bitter, but the rules changed completely.

For two decades, relations between Jerusalem and Ankara under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have resembled a winding roller coaster, with highs, lows, and carefully timed crises. In May 2018, Israel’s ambassador, Eitan Na’eh, stood at Istanbul Airport, removed his shoes and jacket, and underwent a security check in full view of Turkish media cameras. Israel protested the deliberate humiliation. On the surface, it was just another incident in a relationship that had grown accustomed to incidents. In retrospect, however, that image deserves attention: a state does not need to humiliate an ambassador in order to disagree with his government. It does so when the humiliation itself is intended as a message to the public.

For years, we became accustomed to thinking that, in Israeli-Turkish relations, Erdoğan controlled the thermostat: turning up the heat when enthusiasm on the street was needed, and cooling things down when economic and diplomatic interests required it. The confrontation with Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009, the Mavi Marmara affair in 2010, and the diplomatic crisis that followed did not prevent a reconciliation agreement in 2016. Nor did the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in 2018 prevent the restoration of ambassadors in 2022. Hostility served domestic political needs, but it coexisted with trade and practical interests. There was reason to assume that every crisis would eventually be followed by another round of normalization.

Since October 2023, that assumption has required reconsideration. Erdoğan declared that Hamas was not a terrorist organization but a “liberation group”; he later compared Netanyahu to Hitler. Turkey’s support for Hamas predated the war, but Erdoğan’s public defense of the organization after the October 7 massacre gave that support a particularly stark significance. This is not merely a dispute over Israel’s response in Gaza, but the legitimization of an organization that massacred and abducted civilians.

The most important and troubling change is taking place beyond the presidential office. This is no longer only about Erdoğan. The anti-Israel and antisemitic virus has penetrated deep into the Turkish mainstream. The secular, social-democratic CHP, Erdoğan’s principal rival, demanded an end to trade with Israel; its leader, Özgür Özel, argued that the government had acted too late. This does not mean that the opposition has embraced Hamas. Özel has also condemned its attack as terrorism. But the demand to punish Israel now crosses political camps: Erdoğan no longer needs merely to persuade his own supporters, but must also contend with rivals demanding that he take harsher measures.

In schools, the process is taking on another dimension. In September 2024, the Ministry of National Education ordered the school year to begin with a nationwide lesson entitled “From Çanakkale to Gaza: The Spirit of Independence and Love of the Homeland.” Linking Gallipoli, a symbol of Turkey’s national defense, with Gaza incorporates the conflict with Israel into the Turkish national narrative. This marks a shift from presidential rhetoric to material encountered by children in the classroom. Criticism of Israel is not, in itself, antisemitism. Alongside it, however, explicitly antisemitic expressions have also been documented, including references to “Jewish hegemony” and conspiracy theories about Jews and money. There is no basis for generalizing about all Turks, but neither is there justification for dismissing the phenomenon as a presidential whim.

The tragedy is that Turkey and Israel do not share a border, and there is almost no direct conflict of interests between them, apart from the Kurdish issue. Nevertheless, Turkey is rebranding itself as a champion of terrorist movements. Through its open and practical support for Hamas, its deep involvement in Syria and Gaza, and its undisguised aspiration for hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is turning from a hostile state into an enemy state in every sense of the term. Ankara is consolidating its influence in Syria and seeking a role in shaping Gaza’s future. The “Blue Homeland” doctrine reflects expansive maritime claims. Israel, and its ties with Greece and Cyprus, may be perceived as obstacles to those ambitions. In April 2025, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, himself regarded as a potential successor to Erdoğan, warned of the possibility of a “security, political and economic front against Turkey.”

Erdoğan does not hesitate to reveal his intentions. His statement, “Just as we entered Nagorno-Karabakh and Libya, we can do the same to Israel,” was not simply a slip of the tongue by an angry leader. It is reinforced by the approach of his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, the former intelligence chief, who has repeatedly made clear that “Turkey will not hesitate to take active steps to curb Israeli aggression.”

Behind these words stands formidable military power. With an active-duty army of roughly 355,000 personnel, the second largest in NATO, and a modern navy that includes around 16 submarines and dozens of frigates and corvettes, Turkey is also a major arms producer, including advanced UAVs. Turkey increasingly sees itself as a resurgent Ottoman power. From the Turkish perspective, Israel is no longer simply another regional actor. It is the stone obstructing the Turkish wheel, an impediment that must be moved out of the way.

The confrontation does not have to erupt tomorrow into a full-scale war, but the points of friction are likely to deepen, particularly in Syria. Escalation could take various, less overt forms, from attempts to disrupt oil supplies that travel by pipeline to Ceyhan and from there by tanker to Israel, to military escorts for flotillas. As early as September 2025, drones originating in Turkey were documented monitoring a flotilla bound for Gaza. The next stage could be active Turkish naval escorts for maritime flotillas heading to Gaza.

The central and most troubling problem is that the curtain has been raised, and the actors are unwilling to leave the stage. When antisemitism and hostility are cultivated through the education system, the street, and the broader political establishment, normalization becomes an empty incantation. The predator on the Bosphorus is no longer looking for an easy gain at the ballot box. He is seeking his place in the history books, and from his perspective, Israel is the principal obstacle standing in his way. A president can change his rhetoric overnight; a public taught to regard Israel as a threat to its homeland cannot be returned so easily to the status quo ante.

Israel must stop counting on the next reconciliation and prepare for a Turkey that increasingly sees confrontation with Israel as part of its aspiration for regional hegemony. What is needed toward Ankara is a policy of quiet deterrence and clear-eyed diplomacy: making the cost of escalation clear while leaving open a path for de-escalation. Turkey should be taken seriously without giving it a pretext for the military confrontation that its rhetoric increasingly invokes.

Israel does not need to declare Turkey an enemy. It needs to prepare for the possibility that Turkey is already becoming accustomed to thinking of Israel as one.