In recent hours, Turkish President Recep Erdoğan has openly sided with Hamas, calling the militants “liberators” and branding Israel’s response “an atrocity aimed at killing children.” Turkey’s position is not surprising and is aimed at pursuing two tactical objectives: against Iran and against the Abraham Accords. As far as possible, Ankara and Jerusalem maintain excellent relations. The secret service is cooperating and before October 7, thousands of Israeli tourists were in Turkey. Above all, the two countries are enemies of Iran and openly support Azerbaijan against Tehran, a military closeness that has determined Baku’s push into Nagorno-Karabakh. And this is where Turkey’s first target in the ongoing crisis comes into play, the reason for the current rhetoric: in favor of the militias that attacked the Jewish state. In defending Hamas’ demands, Erdogan first wants to break the ties between the Palestinian organization and the Islamic Republic.
The ties between Ankara and Hamas
Hamas has long had ties to Ankara – political leader Ismāʿīl Haniyeh travels on a Turkish passport – in part because of the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliation with Turkey. But in recent years, Iran has managed to present itself as the main contact for the Palestinian militias through Qatar. The Turkish president intends to break this partnership. It is worth remembering that Ankara considers Jerusalem to be its property, “we built it,” Erdogan has repeatedly claimed, putting the city (or almost) on the same level as Mecca and Medina. Pan-Islamic inspiration is precisely the core of the second tactical goal. The Abraham Accords signed between Israel, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, with Saudi Arabia as the next signatory (at least before October 7), describe an Arab-Israeli front against Iran. A development that does not delight Turkey, which wants to place itself at the center of this alignment instead of Israel. Hence the attempt to revive pan-Islamism by, as usual, instrumentally using the Palestinian issue to signal to Arab regimes that it is better to rely on Ankara than on the Jewish state. It may be exploiting the current vulnerability of the Israeli government, which is already under pressure on too many fronts.
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