Amichai Chikli, Israeli minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, leaves little doubt about what he thinks of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“Greetings to the patron of Hamas and ISIS, the dictator who jails every critical journalist, the man behind the barbaric rapes and massacres of Kurdish, Druze and Alawite minorities, the megalomaniac who has lost his mind, a grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar,” the Israeli politician wrote on Monday.
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JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal told JNS that despite its membership in the transatlantic alliance, Turkey should not be considered one of those close partners.
“Turkey is a NATO member in name only,” Misztal said.
He pointed to the country’s record of trying to block Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance and Erdoğan’s purge of the Turkish officer corps after the 2016 coup attempt.
“The idea that Turkey somehow naturally fits into NATO and that it is a member of NATO in good standing is very much open for dispute on the evidence over the past decade,” Misztal told JNS.
Misztal said that he would not describe Turkey as a “true enemy” of Israel, but the Israeli perception of Turkey is driven by how Jerusalem’s view of threats changed after Oct. 7 and concern over Turkey’s role in Syria under Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“The lesson that Israel painfully learned on Oct. 7 is that it can no longer watch major military capabilities amass on its borders,” Misztal said. “The way the Israelis put this is they have to focus on capabilities, not intents, and so they see Turkey both significantly helping arm and train the new Syrian military, turning that into a more capable fighting force and seeking to have its own military in place in Syria.”
“From Israel’s new doctrine of not wanting to have a buildup of military capabilities on or near its borders, that looks problematic—especially given how big Turkey’s military is,” he added. “That is a fundamental problem.”
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Misztal agreed that the potential for any sort of Israeli-Turkish conflict was remote but said that the United States should do more to pressure Turkey in areas where the two countries have disagreements, including areas of shared concern with Israel.
“It’s important for the United States to get over this idea that its partnership with Turkey is too big to fail, and that therefore we need to turn a blind eye to the ways in which Turkey has undermined U.S. interests in and around the Middle East,” he said.
“A tougher line against Turkey on areas where we do have real disagreements would actually, in the long term, be salutary to the relationship and give us a chance of returning to some better understanding between each other,” he added.