Israel-Gaza war threatens to jeopardise Turkish-Western relations

The recall this week of ambassadors from Israel by Bahrain and Jordan has put pressure on the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Turkey to cut diplomatic ties. While distant Bolivia, Chile and Colombia were the first to act, regional players Bahrain, which normalised relations with Israel, and Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, could not resist public opinion and could force the others to follow suit. While Israel’s Ankara embassy staff have gone home, Turkey has not recalled ts ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has, so far, stuck to verbal condemnation of Israel. He said the deadly and devastating war on Gaza had demonstrated Israel was “completely out of its mind”. He accused Israel of committing war crimes and the US and Europe of being complicit. He has called for Israel’s offensive to be stopped as soon as possible and pledged that “those responsible for war crimes will face justice”.

This week, Turks have marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of their state but centennial celebrations have been curbed or cancelled by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has stoked popular anger and tension in Turkey. Television documentaries on the founding of modern Turkey in 1923 following the collapse of the Ottoman empire have been sandwiched between images of horrific coverage of Israel’s Gaza bombings.

Downsizing the centenary suited Erdogan, whose roots are in parties modelled on the Arab Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s parent movement. Since taking power in 2003, he has replaced the secular cosmopolitan, pro-Western Turkish identity imposed by Turkey’s revered founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with a mainly fundamentalist, nationalist identity, and periodically adopted anti-Western policies.

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During an address to a pro-Palestinian rally of thousands of flag waving supporters. Erdogan praised Hamas as a “liberation movement”. Turkey had previously condemned Hamas’s October 7th attack that killed 1,400 in Israel, according to Israeli authorities. His stand broke ranks with the US and Europe, which have branded Hamas a terrorist organisation and greenlighted Israel’s war on Gaza.

Before the war, Turkey had enjoyed good relations with both Hamas and Israel, initially encouraging Erdogan to position Ankara as a mediator between the sides and promote a role for Turkey in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction.

Erdogan was compelled to shift to a hard rhetorical line against Israel and the West by his conservative, religious and nationalist constituencies, which have been shocked by Israel’s protracted bombardment of Gaza and the deaths of more than 9,000 Palestinian civilians as reported by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. He has not, however, compromised Turkey’s membership of Nato by demanding the US air force evacuate the massive Turkish airbase at Incirlik, near Adana.

His shift could also deflect popular attention from Turkey’s economic woes. Although the economy has begun to recover from his now abandoned eccentric economic policies, the populace still suffers from rising inflation and soaring prices. Erdogan is also blamed for welcoming 3.5 million Syrian refugees who are accused by Turks of stealing jobs and overwhelming services, schools and hospitals.

Turkey was among the first Muslim majority countries to recognise Israel. For decades, Turkey and Israel engaged in trade and military co-operation. This alienated Turkey’s Arab neighbours and compelled Ankara to recognise Palestine’s 1988 declaration of independence.

Under Erdogan relations with Israel have see-sawed. He visited Israel in 2005 but relations soured during Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza and were ruptured after Israeli commandos killed nine activists on a Turkish ship aiming to breach Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza. In 2016, Turkey and Israel restored diplomatic ties and in September Erdogan had an amicable meeting with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in New York during the UN General Assembly. Cutting relations again could jeopardise Ankara’s relations with the West.