Vance’s Turkish Troop Proposal Draws GOP Skepticism
Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion on Tuesday that the U.S. would welcome Turkish troops playing a role in the proposed stabilization force in Gaza was met with skepticism from leading Republican lawmakers and experts in Washington.
Vance told reporters in Israel that while the U.S. would not “force” Israel to accept Turkish troops “on their soil,” the Trump administration believed “that there’s a constructive role for the Turks to play.”
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Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow for American strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, expressed similar doubts.
“There’s a million reasons why it won’t be viable to have a long term Israeli military presence on the ground in Gaza. But the same goes for Arab partners,” Ruhe told JI. “Having Turkish forces in there particularly strikes me as a bad idea. Turkey is not an impartial force. They are a capable and experienced military, but mostly doing things the United States and Israel don’t want them to be doing.”
“Turkey does not deserve anything like the benefit of the doubt. Their intentions are certainly suspect given their close ties to Hamas. Having a Turkish military presence literally on [Israel’s] front doorstep in Gaza could actually be worse,” Ruhe continued. “I wouldn’t see them doing anything concrete and substantive to prevent Hamas from basically reestablishing itself as the main actor on the ground in Gaza.”
Beyond a potential incapability to root out Hamas, Ruhe suggested that enabling Turkish troop presence in Gaza could be counterintuitive to U.S. interests in other ways.
“Hamas might actually find it in their interest to try and stoke tensions between Turkey and Israel. That would be a massive headache for the U.S., having, technically, a NATO ally at daggers drawn with our closest partner in the Middle East,” Ruhe said.
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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.