Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 24: With Iran down, Turkey steps into the breach - a conversation with Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak.

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

(Update: audio issues corrected)Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel. I was an ally and vital trading partner for decades -- until the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Islamist AKP party, who began pursuing a "neo-Ottomanist" foreign policy of Turkish influence and expansionism in the region, and specifically identified Israel as a long-term ideological enemy.Turkey is now forging alliances on all Israel's borders and looking to found an Islamic defense alliance a la NATO. Earlier this year, Turkish lawmakers formally declared Israel the country's top national security threat.As Iran's influence retreats in the wake of the war, Erdogan has already energetically stepped into the breach, calling for Israel to be dismantled and trying to position himself as leader of the Muslim political world. Unlike Iran, he may well have the military and geopolitical clout in the region to get it done.Are the two countries on a trajectory for a clash in, say, 20 years' time? Or can these two Middle Eastern powers find a modus vivendi that prevents more conflict in the region?We posed this question to Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, a scholar at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University who grew up in Turkey's Jewish community and is today one of Israel's top Turkey analysts.This episode was sponsored by an anonymous sponsor and dedicated to Aviv Atzili, 49, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7 was while fighting alongside the kibbutz’s emergency response team. His wife, Liat, was kidnapped that day, but was released as part of the first truce in November 2023.Aviv's body was located and returned to Israel for burial in a joint IDF-Shin Bet operation in Gaza two days before the start of the Israel-Iran war together with the body of Yaakov Yagil, also from Nir Oz. We remember them.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[e-mail]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask Kaviv Anything. The Israeli-Iran war is over about 24 hours. And we've already heard from another leader in the region that he has learned lessons from the war. This is someone who leads a country that was the very first Muslim country to recognize Israel and had a longstanding military and economic alliance and close ties and now does not. There's no economic trade between these two countries. and there is talk about the need for this country to build out a massive missile arsenal because the lesson from Iran is that ballistic missiles can penetrate the Israeli missile shield, apparently.

There are already clouds gathering. People are talking about an arc of 10, 20 years. This country is dominant right now in Syria. It is the next big question. Do I want a war? Do I think there is a war? God, no. But nevertheless, this is now one of the great questions that we're going to be asking.

And I am joined today by my wife and producer and just generally the person who makes everything in my life possible. So be, you know, be careful where you put you, but that was too much joking. I lost it. Okay. I'm joined today by my wife, Rachel Gould, who is going to be helping me ask these questions. And by our expert, Dr. Chai Aitan Koyne, Yanaro. And I hope I got that right because my Turkish pronunciation is not as good as it used to be, I guess would be the joke. He's from the Mosheed-Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and a well-known, often interviewed expert on Turkey and Turkish matters in Israeli media and in Israeli public discourse.

Before we get into it, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by an anonymous sponsor. Thank you very much for your sponsorship, who follows in the Great Tradition. edition of asking that we dedicate this episode to someone who fell on October 7. Some dedications have been to members of the family who fought in World War II. It's been a beautiful thing just to watch the sponsorships have almost been as felt as serious and profound and interesting of a kind of community building act as the actual episode. So really thank you to our audience, to our Patreon members. You can join us on Patreon.

It's $5 a month. You get episodes earlier. you get to take part in some conversations that we're part of. You also get to be part of a monthly live stream. Hope to see you there. This episode is dedicated to Aviv Hazzili, 49 from Kibbutz Nir-Oz. He was murdered by Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz on October 7. And the reason we chose him to remember today is that his body was returned to Israel

by an operation of the IDF and Shabakh in Gaza two days before the Israeli-Iran war and kind of got lost and swallowed up in the events that followed. He was killed while fighting the terrorists alongside the Kibbutz's emergency response team. His body was then abducted to Gaza. His wife, Liyat, was kidnapped and released in the November 2023 truce. In addition to Liyadh, he survived by their three children, Offrey 22, Neta 20 and Ayah 19, as well as his parents, Telma and Yossi and his brothers Ronen and Yvtach. We remember him.

We remember everyone who fell on October 7, and we remember that we still have. have hostages currently held by Hamas in Gaza. Thank you for being here, Dr. Yana Rojak, and let's get into it. It is my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on this distinguished platform. Well, we are now in historical times in the aftermath of this Operation Rising Lion, which changed the balance of power in the Middle East in a significant manner. Before the war, when we looked at the Middle East at large,

we can say that there were several influential players. Who were there? Of course, we have this so-called resistance axis. Iran, Hezbollah, of course, Hamas, Houthis, and of course the Iraqi Hashd-Shd-Shabi. And of course, we had and still have, of course, Turkey and Qatar, the Islamic Brotherhood access. We can also tag

the Gulf countries like United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, like we can say, Abraham Accords Axis, and of course we had Israel. And this war, of course, thanks to the very sophisticated success of the Israeli defense forces, air forces, the Mossad, this changed the whole balance of power. I would like to remind our audience that, that, that the Israeli defense forces, first of all, put an end to Hezbollah. We managed to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, and this created a kind of a domino effect. We later saw the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and the Iranians lost their stronghold. And to that stronghold, another important country in the Middle East, Turkey, basically, they managed to feel the vacu.

And now, thanks to the Israeli success, this unprecedented success, within 12 days. Now, when we are looking at the Middle Eastern map, we are seeing two important major military powers. These are Turkey of Mr. Erdogan and Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli-Turkish relationship is a very complicated one. Yeah? Let me take you back one second, Dr. A, because maybe focus a little bit, the question, because we've spoken so much about Iran and really all of the events over the last two weeks. And one of the things that stood out to me, and I think to many of our listeners, was that most of the Sunni states, kind of gave some sort of perfunctory condemnation of the Israeli strike, whether we're talking about Saudi Arabia or the UAE, some of them were very, very visible. silently, like Syria. But then there was one power, one rising power, as you said, Turkey that was

very, very vocal in its opposition, talking about genocide and the point of no return, obviously. This is, you know, the leader Erdogan, the leader of Turkey. But it seems to have gone beyond rhetoric. I mean, just a few days ago, perhaps last week, he made the announcement that he, as Kaviv said, he's going to start stockpiling those ballistic missiles that we saw creates such devastation, just yesterday morning in Bercheva, but also in Tel Aviv and in Haifa, it seems to go beyond rhetoric to action and should we be worried? I assume that, yes, we should be worried. At the end, we saw a huge turn in the Turkish foreign policy after the war, after the eruption

of the war in the Gaza Strip. You know, it's very interesting, but approximately a month before the eruption of the war in Gaza, we witnessed a very important summit between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Erdogan at the outskirts of the United Nations. However, the war in the Gaza Strip, the declaration of a total war, a full-scale war that seeks to topple and eradicate the Hamas terrorist organization, was not digested in Ankara. And we basically, with this kind of a decision, we pushed them to make a U-turn. However, we really did not

think that this U-turn we could foresee that this normalization could collapse but we could not foresee that the traditional Turkish foreign policy of like being a pro-Palestinian would be upgraded for being a pro-Hamas.

This is something unprecedented. And last October the Turkish parliament, the Turkish parliament made a very important, took a very important decision. And in a closed session, they tagged the state of Israel as a national security threat. And they made it officially, they declared it officially on January that Israel is Turkey's number one adversary. So if we are not going to forget this, you know, very important fact. And then let us now look how the Turks are evaluating of what is going on in Iran.

Do they generally feel threatened? I mean, Greece was always the number one threat to Turkey, right? We want no war with them, no nothing with them. We want to just be left alone by them. This is internal regime ideology kind of stuff. This is the AKP party of Erdogan, right? or do they have a reason other than the fact that they are some kind of an affiliate and ideological outgrowth of the mother? Can you explain that to us?

Of course. This is very surprising to Israelis. Because generally both sides agree that they're each other's adversary. Okay. So first of all, I totally agree with you that we have nothing to do with Turkey. We are not seeking to get parts of the Turkish territory. First of all, let us put this very known fact. for us on the table because we may also have some Turkish audience.

Okay, so we would like to tell them from Israel that we have no hostile intentions against the Turkish people and the Turkish territorial integrity. This is the fact on the ground. However, when we are looking at the statements of the Turkish government and especially President Erdogan, we are seeing a very different rhetoric. They are pumping a propaganda to their people that Israel began this war, not only to occupy Gaza. I'm quoting, by the way, it's not my words. I'm quoting their propaganda.

Israel now is acting inside Gaza and then in Lebanon and then in Syria. And then later, according to their, you know, fascinating vision, Israel might also penetrate into the territory. integrity of Turkey and may try to grab some land from Turkey. Of course, from our perspective, this is really ridiculous. But they are trying to make sense of this accusation by saying that Southeast Turkey was defined within the boundaries of the so-called promised land. And since they tag our Israeli government as a messianic radical, a Jewish, extremist government.

So they truly believe. When you say the promised land, we're obviously not talking about the partition plan or the UN, we're talking about the biblical vision of the, from the Bible, right? I mean, that's the, we're reckoning all the way back to those days. Yes. We are talking about the Bible. And in their opinion, our government's, you know, hidden agenda is to realize, establish the so-called Greater Israel.

Okay, so of course, from our perspective, we know that it's not the reality. What we are trying to get in the Gaza Strip is to eradicate Hamas' ability of launching rockets against our civilians, and we would like to put an end to this extraterritorial, we can say, threat

that they may infiltrate into the Israeli territory and kidnap our citizens and rape them and murder, than et cetera. Every sovereign state has a right to defend itself, and this is what Israel is doing right now. However, when we are looking at the Turkish media, this is not portrayed as such.

In the Turkish media, the Gaza Strip is portrayed as the first phase of a grand plan. And in their opinion, the resistance, the so-called resistance of Hamas, Hizballa, and Syria would be defending Turkey from a future imaginary Israeli attack. Let's say that you are a shoemaker, you're a tailor and you have a shop. You have a TV, but you're not looking to the TV, you're doing your work. But passively, you're hearing the news all the day long.

And in the Turkish TV, they are only saying these kind of negative conspiracy. theory-based information about the state of Israel. And naturally, I will not blame those ordinary Turkish citizens who harbor some negative sentiments and tendencies against the state of Israel because they only exposed to this poisonous propaganda. So this is the problem. Here's my question. The Turks hated us long before the Gaza war. I mean, I remember Erdogan to power and his party. And I'd love if you explain to our audience a little bit who he is and what his party is. But I remember 20 years ago dating myself. When I finished the army, I flew with some of my friends from the army to Istanbul. And we spent the day three girls wandering around Istanbul.

We only have to cover our hair as we walked into masks. We spoke in Hebrew. We spoke in English. We felt absolutely no fear. And not only that, we rented a car. It was dead winter. And we drove to Kapakakia, which is a, if anybody has had the opportunity to see it really. one of the wonders of the world in central Anatolia, an early Christian site. And we never at any point felt any sense of fear. I mean, yes, we were young and probably stupid, but everybody was welcoming, you know, even though we were very clearly both secular, Israeli, and presumably Jewish. And today, something like that is unimaginable, you know, three girls just out of the army trekking across Turkey, you know, knocking on doors and eating in people's houses. It's just, it's a world that's

gone. And that happened long before the current conflict with Gaza. So what happened? How did that relationship sour so deeply, so quickly, since the rise of El Doran to the present? What happened before, Asa? I think it was something gradual. I think it did not happen all of a sudden, but we cannot detach it from the Gaza, from the incidents in Gaza. Since we are all living in Israel, I assume that you are very familiar, but maybe our audience is not. Unfortunately, due to Hamas's constant rocket fire against Israeli citizens, and from time to time due to their attacks against the Israeli soldiers and kidnapping some of them, Israel had no choice but to launch some anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip

and we had several unfortunately rounds of fighting. And in each fighting we witnessed starting with the operation Castled and the others. You know, we had many, unfortunately, I lost the track. All of these operations began to have a huge impact on the Turkish public because approximately, please correct me if I'm wrong, but once in two or once in four years, we had an escalation in the Gaza Strip and in each escalation, the Turkish administration, in a gradual manner, they deteriorated the relationship with Israel in an intentional manner. You're going to say. Israel was in the Gaza Strip in 2005 and I believe it's by 2006,

2007. 2006, December, we had the operation. We're already in the first incursion due to a Hamas tunnel. And the infamous confrontation in the Davos summit between the deceased Israeli president, Shimon Peres, Zichrono Lvracha. And with the Turkish president, then Prime Minister Erdogan, right? So since then, we began to see an intention deterioration in the relationship and in Turkey they put this they portrayed this in a manner like a

football culture like a soccer culture okay or you are with us or you are supporting the other team you could not criticize your own government and if you did so you would be tagged as a traitor so who would be you know tagged as a as a traitor nobody wants a such a So this anti-Israel criticizing Israel has turned into a kind of a public consensus between the pro-government circles and anti-government circles. And it basically began to function as a mechanism that it could also drop, it could also lower the tension between the two sides that they began to use. these pro-Palestinian rallies or any kind of parliamentary acts, for instance, you know, condemning Israel, et cetera. These incidents were used to rally their people around the flag, okay, to put an end to the fragmentation in the Turkish politics. So therefore we can say

that Israel became a useful tool also for the opposition and also for the government circles. And another important issue here is whenever there was a verbal confrontation between Israel and Erdoin, if you're going to observe the Turkish media and the public surveys, you will see that Erdogan's approval rates began to rise. And therefore, the opposition circles began to ask themselves a question. I think it's a legitimate question. if we are having a race here, a democratic race, and if you're trying to get rid of your political rivals,

so you're asking yourself how his public approval rises. So you see that whenever we see, we witnessed Israel bashing, so his popularity is rising. So how are you going to neutralize this? You begin to imitate him. Can I ask? But this is cheaper. There's something really striking about this.

This is the most worrying thing I've read about Turkey yet. I mean, when he arrests an opposition leader that's fairly worrying. And when he talks about the need to remove Israel, ultimately Israel has to be removed, that's fairly worrying. But I think the most worrying thing I've heard is Professor Ruth Weiss in her studies of anti-Semitism. She talks about how at the founding of Israel, the Arab world had a choice. And it could have chosen, for example, to build post-colonial, post-imperial states that are successful and democratic and have free markets and have success stories. Or it could choose in order to shore up the dictatorships that had taken hold after the military, usually dictatorships or religious dictatorships that had taken hold after the withdrawal of the French and the British empires. It could have chosen to organize all of its politics around the question of Israel.

Israel as a symbol of Islamic weakness. Israel as a symbol of Arab weakness that has to be overcome so that the Arabs can come back to their own. The organizing of Arab politics around Israel was a foundational experience in the Arab world in the 1950s and 60s and a catastrophic one because it validated the dictatorships. It prevented a serious, healthy politics, a self-critical politics, a politics of factions that. that compete in a democratic land. And it just turned everything into this kind of obsessive, as you say, soccer game. If that's what's happening in Turkey, then something bad is happening in Turkey. If the organizing of politics around Israel, because one of the striking things about what you're saying that there's this argument that Israel ultimately wants Turkey, you know,

Hamas and Chizbalah in Lebanon and the Assad-Rashid. and many of the militias that Israel targeted in Syria and Iran itself, they're not seven enemies. They're one enemy. They're one deeply integrated enemy. Hamas is a tiny bit of an outlier, but profoundly integrated on the question of Israel, took weapons, took money, took planning, took training from Iran. So Israel has now had a 20-month war against a single enemy, which as its strategy had built out multiple proxies. Hezbollah took weapons, it took money, and it took orders from Iran. So if Turkey is now coming forward and saying to its own people, to ordinary people who don't know any better, because why would they know the details of Iranian foreign policy?

And it's saying to them, look at the Israelis. They invade this country and this country and this country and this country, as if they're just on a rampage of invading everything they can invade. And they're about to cross Syria, cross Lebanon, enter into Turkey, a country with a competent army, unlike Syria, unlike Iran, a country with an army that could potentially defeat us in the battle. field in multiple kinds of battlefields, whether it's tank battles, whether it's the Navy for sure. It has massive and total naval supremacy. It's organizing politics around fantasies about the threat of Israel and about the need to overcome Israel for Islamic dignity. So is Turkey 1950s Arab world? Is it in decline? What is it when anti-Semitism infects a society, it's never about the Jews. It's about the internal collapse of that own society. It's about the internal weaknesses. of that society. What does it mean? What are we looking at? A small follow of. You actually lived in

Turkey, right? You're born there. You grew up there, right, and moved to Israel when you were 22. Did you ever yourself experience, you know, as a child or as a young man, you know, the sort of anti-Semitism that now seems to be, by your own description, very prevalent? Okay. So let me start from your question, and then I'll pass to Habib if it's fine. First of all, I would like to emphasize that personally, I really did not witness any direct anti-Semitism towards me. I only have good memories. And I'm grateful for the Ottoman Empire of welcoming my forefathers from Spain, who were expelled from Spain because of the Inquisition in 1492.

And thanks to their bold decision, my forefathers were accepted. in the Ottoman Empire. And while our Jewish relatives were killed in Christian Europe, we were protected in the Turkish Ottoman Empire. And, you know, maybe the first Republican years may not be tagged as the golden age for the Jewish community, especially during the Second World War. We had many unpleasant memories like the wealth tax, etc.

But at large, when we are comparing the Turkish-Jewish community to other communities in Europe, I think we should be grateful and we should say this out loud because we are not like those people that we receive the good treatment and now we are trying to make a defamation. No, we've are treated very well. Okay. In my case of moving to Israel is something very different. I wanted to be in Israel. I consider myself as a Zionist.

And therefore, I wanted to start my life here, raise my children as Jewish Israelis. Of course, personally, again, I'm saying that I love Turkey. I love the Turkish language, the Turkish culture. So this is my story. And regarding Kaviv's question. I think this is a great question. And I think that anti-Zionism and pretty much anti-Semitism plays a very crucial role here, but I would like to provide you a different angle.

You know, maybe we should not look at the world only from this narrow angle of being Israeli or being Jewish. But when we are looking at the Turkish foreign policy at large, we can say that this is a neo-Ottomanist foreign policy. So let's analyze this concept. We had this huge empire, Ottoman Empire, which ruled from 1299 until 1920. Okay, this is a huge venture, okay, very important player in history. And this empire ruled in the Balkans, in Southeast, Europe, in northern Africa, in the Middle East, some parts of Caucasia, of course, in Asia Minor. It controlled huge areas. And this neo-Ottomanism of today is seeking to revive the Turkish influence in all these

ex-territories of the Ottoman Empire. So where am I heading to? When we are looking at this empire, especially its successor state, Turkey, we had three important minority groups that were taken from the Ottoman Empire. These are the Jews, Greeks, and Armenians. These three groups are known as the most important minority groups of the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Turkish Republic. When we are looking at the nation states of these three minority groups, which means Greece, Armenia

and the state of Israel. Look at their relationship with today's Turkey. You will see it is like a very fluctuating situation as well. Let's start from Armenia. We all know

that in 2020 there was a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. And Turkey sided with Azerbaijan. Of course, Israel also sided with Azerbaijan. I just don't want to get lost. We have an ally in common there.

Yes. I just don't want to get lost in another conflicts right now. But again... The Israeli siding with Azerbaijan has to do with Iran. That's nothing to do with Armenia or Turkey. I would like to make an emphasis on Erdogan. He put an emphasis on Turkish nationalism, pan-Turkishness, because of his brotherhood with Azerbaijanis.

Azerbaijanis. And of course, this is also applicable, of course, inevitably as a religious, blended relationship as well. Assyrians are seen as something similar to ethnic Turks or because they're... They are in terms of ethnicity, they are Turkish. Right. They're Turkish, but they're not Sunni. They are not Sunni. They are not Sunni. Okay. But still, we have a Christian enemy. And of course, Azerbaijanis are Shiites and Turks are Sunnis, but he is, he is. the emphasis is not the religion, but rather we can say that it was the ethnicity and the Turkish

brotherhood or sisterhood, right, Azerbaijan and Turkey against Armenia. And whenever there is a friction with Armenia, his public approval rates are, you know, jumping, increasing dramatically. Why? Because the Turkish people do, they do remember the Armenians as an underdog that they controlled once. and now they are defeating them. So it's a great thing. The world is coming back into place. Yes.

This is the way things are supposed to be. Yes. Right? And they are returning to the empire to its former glory. Empire strikes back, right? So the same is applicable for the Greeks. Whenever there is a friction between Greece and Turkey, so it is only playing to the hands of Erdogan.

Why? Because the Greeks are like paying killers for the Turks. Okay, really. And the last, but not the least, of course, the Jews. Our nation state is the state of Israel. And whenever there is a friction with the state of Israel, again, Erdogan's public approval rates are jumping. So in my opinion, we cannot tag this only as an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist.

But as an anti-minority of the ex-Othoman subjects, okay, of course, it has anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist elements in it. Of course, I'm not ignoring it, obviously, I'm not a naive person. But it is not only directed against us. It is something broader that it is directed towards the non-Muslim ex-minority. of the Ottoman Empire. And from their perspective, all of, I mean, some segments of Armenia, and of course, obviously Greece, Israel,

these territories were once upon a time, part of the Ottoman Empire. So, you know, the very existence inside Syria, inside Iraq, in northern Cyprus, or western Libya, right? In all these territories, we have Turkish existence today. Of course, Turkish occupation.

Right. So they are justifying their existence on how, I mean, on what, on this Ottoman heritage. They are saying that we are not aliens to this land. Our forefathers ruled on these territories for 400 and two years. Let me jump in here. We have, so it's about them. They have their own story. It's got nothing to do with us. And when they build out these fantasies of us, they're responding to a century ago, an Ottoman imperial experience. They're responding, I can't help noticing that all of the massive and important imperial minorities that now have their own nation states and which Turkey is now at some level or another struggling with chafing against, you know, there's friction with them. They're all non-Muslim minorities. Now, the non-Muslim minorities are the problem in this

new Turkish sort of vision of the world or new old vision of the world. Let me ask, so let me ask the brass tax. Turkey has total naval supremacy in any war with Israel. Turkey has a significant, dramatic, powerful navy. It has a land army that is what, twice the size of Israel's land army. Turkey has enough democracy to be competent. It is not one of these armies. Like when this is something that we learned a lot about in the Ukraine war, when Putin invaded,

and it turned out that his army on paper was very large, but his army. in reality because so much of the spare parts and the fuel and all this other stuff never actually got bought because so much of the money of the budgets was pocketed in corruption along the way that actually was a much smaller army that could barely struggle to keep up with Ukraine's army. There's an advantage to a democratic army that has these internal checks and balances within it that keeps the army actually functional. Turkey is democratic enough to have a functional army in that sense. It has a competent state. It has a serious air force. It has, it can actually challenge us. seen run-ins between Israeli and Turkish planes over Syria. Turkey wants to dominate Syria

and is eager to do it and its own militia has basically taken over Syria in the form of Mr. Giuliani, the new president. What are the chances that this reaches any kind of military conflict? What are the chances of any kind of military confrontation between Israel and Turkey in the next five, ten years? What are the chances that that's the situation of the Middle East, the divide of the Middle East in 30 years? Do we need to start building a grand alliance with the Greeks and the Armenians, against Turkish expansionism and neo-Ottomanism. What are we actually looking at in terms of strategy, in terms of an enemy? Well, this is, you know, the question of the questions.

I wish I had a crystal ball and I could answer your question. But I can refer to you in this. Doctor, I'm sorry, as a journalist, I have to say, you don't actually have to know. You just have to say it with confidence. That's how this works. Okay, I'll shut up. So let me answer you this way. Before the fall of Assad, these two countries, they only shared a naval border, we can say,

if we can consider the Mediterranean Sea as a common border between Israel and Turkey. However, after the fall of Assad, now we are seeing a complete, almost complete, Turkish domination in Syria, northern Syrian territories of Afrin, Telalabiad, Jarablus, Rasel Ayn are still under Turkish occupation, and they have no intention of evacuating these territories. This is, of course, strengthening their heart. We should expect those to be permanent. Sorry for interrupting.

Just to clarify, because you're saying a lot of things that maybe not all of our listeners and viewers understand. Turkey now has massive forces inside Syria as part of an offensive against Kurds, which it claims are helping Kurdish groups that it designates terror groups and Kurdish independence, whatever. There's a whole thing.

Turkish offensive in Syria. It's not making the Western press because, well, I have my theories on why, but that's not relevant to right now. But you think that's a permanent presence in Syria? We should expect that for years to come. Well, on paper, it was also launched against the ISIS. We should also mention it. At least their first operation in Jaravlos, Canton, was directed against ISIS. But then in all other areas, as you mentioned, they targeted the PYD-D-Y-D-Y YPG organization of the Kurds. In Turkish eyes, it is an offshoot of the PKK, another organization that in eyes of Ankara, it is considered as a terrorist organization, of course.

So let me put it this way. The Turks, they did penetrate into northern Syria in 2016 and still did not withdraw from there. The Turks penetrated in northern Iraq in 2019, and since then they still occupy. The Turks, it's such a different story, but again, we should underline the historical facts. They intervened in Cyprus in 1974, and half of the island is still occupied by Turkey. They are present in Libya since 2019, 2020. more or less, what am I seeing here whenever a Turkish army, whenever the Turkish army is... And also Somalia and Sudan, correct?

In Somalia, they have a military base. They have a full base, right, a full permanent presence. Inegroating a military base is something different because it's a voluntary invitation from the hosting country. For instance, we also see such a base also in Qatar, for instance. Batav. Yes, okay. So long story short, when we are looking at this picture, we see that the Turks are entering to a certain territory, but their car has no reverse gear. Okay, they are not withdrawing. Okay, so from an Israeli perspective, if Erdogan did not adopt this pro-Hamas attitude, and if he even remained with the pro-Hamas, Palestinian traditional Turkish foreign policy, I can really tell you that Jerusalem could digest it.

But since Erdogan is tagging the state of Israel as the number one security threat against Turkey's territorial integrity, which is, in my opinion, unthinkable, right? So, of course, Israel cannot say that, oh, okay, we are in Lala land and nothing will happen. Obviously, after October the 7th, we cannot have such a luxury of ignoring a future threat. This is a chess game and we should foresee the moves are our opponents, our players. And unfortunately, Turkey has turned itself into an opponent of the state of Israel, as it was also emphasized in the Nagel report. This Nagel report for those who are not familiar, it was a kind of a recommendation for the Israeli government.

It's not a binding document, but it suggested. The National Security Advisor. Yes. What's the National Security Advisor? So it suggested for the Israeli government to take necessary precautions for this growing new threat that may replace Iran in the future. So the Israeli red line is such. when we are looking at Syria,

we do not want to see that our air superiority would be challenged by a power like Turkey because this is very ironic but Turkey and I'm very pleased with that they did not declare any hostilities

against Israel but they are challenging Israel so it is putting Turkey into a gray zone Okay, and taking decisions in the gray zone is much more complicated because if you have an enemy, then everything is white and black. So you take the bold decision of, you know, having these targets, let's say, eliminated or not. Okay, but in case of Turkey, since Turkey is not categorized as the enemy of the state of Israel, of course, obviously in a logical manner, our decision makers are not. not pushing the button to eliminate those potential threats because Turkey is still regarded as a member of NATO, a close ally of Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. I have to say, I can't get over for months now. I can't get over how utterly ridiculous it is. I'm watching it happen in real time, something that I'd only ever read about in the 1950s.

Iran has this anti-Israeli vision that it was willing to sacrifice everything on, half a trillion dollars on over the course of 46 years. I just, the future happiness is about the redemption of Islam. They think of themselves as this great Islamic revolution to restore it. And they're willing to sacrifice it all on this fantasy about Israel. And Turkey is just slowly creeping into that. So I have to assume, and I'm assuming, and maybe this is some kind of a paradigm that will get us stuck in a bad place, but I have to assume that it's fake. And my instinct says to me, it's fake. It's a political vocabulary that's useful for the political situation of Erdwan.

And he doesn't mean to act on it. And that has happened. There have been times where they say evil, bad things, and the Jews are this terrible thing. But they don't need to act on it. It's literally just posturing and standing in front of. certain audiences, it's good to have an enemy and there's no enemy better than an enemy that is neither Muslim nor Christian, has no backing of a billion adherence behind it, and it's annoyingly difficult to put down and to put in its place. And so Israel is this very convenient fall guy.

Is that all it is? And we just, we let Turkey do its thing. A place that Turkey dominates is a safe place for Israel because Turkey does not over the long term want any kind of conflict. And therefore, even though this feels like a bad thing, it's a good thing. Or is this just misunderstanding Hamas again? And to answer that question, I want to bring you back to the AKP party. Erdogan comes from somewhere. Erdogan comes from a party deeply affiliated with a Muslim Brotherhood, deeply affiliated with the same Islamic ideas,

born in Egypt in the 19th century and founded as an organization in the 1920s in Egypt, responding to Western imperialism, responding to the sense of Islamic weakness, talking about a return to a pious, old first generations of Islam in order to redeem Islam and come back into God's grace and find geopolitical solutions through Islamic politics. And the Qatari regime, Erdogan himself, his party, they're part of that.

Now, Hamas is part of that. Hamas began as a Muslim Brotherhood chapter in Gaza, founded there in 1987. The ideological question seems to me fundamental, because we're trying to understand if he really means this stupid, ridiculous, childish fantasy that's very clearly just a political manipulation of his own people about us, or if actually this is a larger religious vision that we have to be worried about. Tell us about the AKP party about its ideology. Am I overstating the case?

Are they slightly affiliated with the Muslim brothers, but they're not even remotely Hamas? What should we know about them? And what does that mean for how we watch Turkish expansionism now? Okay, so the core nucleus of the Justice and Development Party are the ones who came from the Turkish Islamist party called the Welfare Party. And of course we had Felicity Party and other parties, but the most dominant one which was known all to Turkish public, etc. It was the welfare party of Nejmettin Erbakan. And Najmatin Erbakan, the former Turkish Prime Minister, was known as the flag barrier of the Turkish Islam, and he was very much affected from the ideas of this Muslim Brotherhood ideology.

Actually, the Muslim Brotherhood ideology began to penetrate into Turkey during 1960s, 1970s. There was a very important printhouse in Turkey's province. called Malatia. This printhouse, and its name was the crescent, Hilani. They began to translate all of the works of the senior Muslim Brotherhood figures like Hassan al-Banna, like Said Kutub, etc. So their ideas began to penetrate into the Turkish Islamist circles. And obviously, this had a huge impact. We can also say that many different intellectuals like Nejib Fazl Kisakurek, who had a very important impact on Erdogan and his close circle.

These people were deeply influenced from this pan-Islamist ideas. But this is not only pan-Islamism, I would like to remind you that the Turks are not Arabs. They had their glorious imperial past. So they injected this Muslim Brotherhood pan-Islamist ideology into their Ottoman glory. And we had this neo-Ottomanism and they began to tag themselves as the elder brother, as the big brother of the other Muslim nations. Okay? So historically speaking, they feel that they have a historical role here.

And in their opinion, the collapse. of the Ottoman Empire was the calamity, was the disaster for the old Muslim Ummah, okay? And therefore, they would like to, ideologically

speaking, they want to restore this glory. And I would like to give you a very concrete example only from three days ago. In Istanbul, there was the summit of the organization of the Islamic cooperation. And there, Erdogan began

to deliver a speech like the you know of course not in a spiritual manner but like a political leader like the caliph of the whole Islamic world and he said the destiny of Istanbul and the destiny of

Tehran Gaza, Jerusalem Baghdad, Mecca, Medina Tripoli, et cetera, et cetera cannot be separated from each other and he said that the organization of the Islamic cooperation should turn into a very effective body that can deter Muslim countries' enemies.

He is proposing to have here an Islamic army, an Islamic alliance like NATO, but an Islamic one. And he is opening the gates also to the Shiites, because he also mentioned in his metaphor Sana and also Tehran. Okay. So, He's saying that let's unite together as an Ummah, and then as a bloc, let's begin to influence world politics also in the United Nations Security Council. For instance, he is insisting that Turkey should represent all of the Muslim nations there. So now when we are seeing the decrease, the deterioration of Iran, the fall of Iran, almost militarily. So now they see themselves as the only really powerful nation that can speak in the name of all Muslim countries. I would like to provide you another important example.

We recently witnessed a confrontation between India and Pakistan. Look at these statements of the Indian army. You will see that the Pakistani army used lots of Turkish-made. UAVs, unmanned air vehicles. It means that Turkey's foreign policy is not solely focused on the Palestinians, but it is pan-Islamist. It's also against India. They are favoring Pakistan.

So we should also put the Turkish-Pakistani cooperation under the magnifying glass. It is very concerning. And of course this is creating some other opportunities. It is turning India and Greece and Cyprus into Israel's number one allies, of course, after the United States. Let us not exaggerate. But we are seeing that Turkey is pushing Cyprus, Greece and India into Israel's arms. We do not have to persuade these states that they should be ally of the state of Israel.

but Turkey, because it's aggressive, pan-Islamist, neo-Ottomanist, foreign policy, is doing everything to finish the job for us. So just to clarify, we should be worried. And not immediately, but they'll take 20 years to potentially have any kind of clash, but there could be a clash in 20 years, and they'll spend the time to now and then preparing for it, and they'll do it at a grand level on the global state. It's very easy to inject pan-Islamism in the ideas of the caliphate of the Muslim brothers.

The teacher of the founder of the Muslim brother, Hassan Abana is a guy named Brashid Rida. I talked a lot about him on the podcast because people need to understand these sort of foundational ideas that animate Hamas, that animate also the Shia. The Shia borrows the ideas from the Sunnis in the 40s and 50s. It's easy to inject pan-Islamism, caliphateism, into neo-Ottomanism, because the last Ottoman-insult. was a caliph. He styled himself. He called himself a caliph. And when bin Laden, after 9-11, explained in some text that he put out or some video that he put out, what his thinking was, he talked about, I think it was 1922, 1923, the founding of the Turkish Republic and the fall of

the caliphate and the need to return to a caliphate. And he absolutely comes from this lineage that, you know, goes through the Muslim Brotherhood. And so Erdogan is now watching, Erdogan presumably is then very pleased that Iran has crashed because the Shia are not the vanguard, as Iran saw itself, of the great Islamic resurgence and restoration. And that means that the last, I would say, I don't know what to call it, internally, deeply competent, capable and militarily powerful, Sunni Muslim country in the Middle East. There are others out there, but not here, not in this area, can do that. be that vanguard, the last

reasonable claim to a caliphate was a Turkish claim. He wants to rebuild it. And everything plugs into that vision and every institution fits into that vision and that vision is his defining vision. And we should also say, Ataturk dismantling the Ottoman Empire

and building secular Turkey, created a secular constitution, protected by the army. Bernard Lewis famously talked about postmodern revolutions, which is these bloodless military coups that restored secular democracy, and then the army always went home to their barracks. And it was this weird kind of Turkish secularism was the foundation of Ataturk's project. But the Muslim conservatism percolates, and it percolates among the populations, especially in rural areas. And that population grew much faster than the secular population of Turkey. And now Erdogan is basically riding a deep conservative Turkish Islamism that is extremely popular.

That's a majority of the people. And he's riding that, staying in power and building out a neo-Ottoman vision in which Israel doesn't fit, in which Israel doesn't fit at all. Is that the bottom line? Is that what we're talking about? The Shia failed. The Sunni is now on a grander level hope they will succeed. That's the Turkish vision. We're still having a 150-year-old conversation about Islamic weakness.

and Islam taking its proper place in the world, and that's still the foundational animating impulse of these political worlds. And sorry, it's two days after the Iran War. Maybe we shouldn't have done it today because it just feels exhausting, but nothing's over. Let me put it this way. First of all, I would like to mention that. Erdogan really enjoys from this humiliation of Iran.

But he will never say it out loud because this humiliation was made by the state of Israel. Okay? So it is like, I love you, I hate your relationship. He is really pleased that Iran cannot, you know, is not constituting a very strong state, you know, a kind of a threat, even he is not threatened from Iran. But now he sees himself as the only dominant actor. Okay. So he is very pleased, but he will never admit it. I also would like to. to highlight here another thing. You know, when we are looking at Iran's strategy against the state of Israel, what was it? We are calling in Hebrew the rings of fire, right? They created a ring of fire in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Yemen. So how Turkey works. Of course, when we are looking at Iran,

we can say that this body is very in the eyes of the international community, especially in the West, Iran is considered as a, you know, controversial, not so legitimate, a misogynistic regime. Right. So it is very easy for the state of Israel to launch a diplomatic attack against Iran because it has many disaffecencies. Okay. It has very weak points. But when we are looking at Turkey, it's not the case. Turkey, as you mentioned, is marketing itself as a democracy.

I'm emphasizing and highlighting that it is marketing itself because obviously I cannot tag a country democratic when they put the most important opposition leader into prison with fake charges. Okay. So this is, I'm only closing the parentheses here. Food for talk. Don't close the parentheses. Tell us another three sentences. Yeah. How much is it a democracy?

How much isn't it? There's still elections. Local elections. There are still elections. But as we can see, depotentiated. potential candidate of the opposition will not be able to run because he is in prison. Okay, obviously. The Turks are marketing themselves as the member of NATO, a friend of the US, a close ally

of the all European countries in their fight with Ukraine and Russia. You know, Turkey is securing the southern flank of Europe. So it is very hard for us to come here and to tell them. look at they are posing an existential threat against us and I would like to give you a very important example here so that you will understand the Turkish modus operandi instead of creating instead of forming rings of fire Turkey lacks the word legitimacy in March thanks to the initiative of the Turkish foreign ministry there was a very important summit in Jordan five countries Turkey Syria Syria

Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. They formed a new body called the neighbors of Syria. Okay. And this body, they also formed a military command base, a joint one. And when they are asked why they need such a thing, so they say that we have a problem here in our region called ISIS, and this ISIS should be kicked out. And every time we are seeing that because of some reasons the countries who are not originated in this region, in other words,

the United States, is conducting here military interventions. So if we will go into erect this body and instead of the United States, these five states will find a military solution against

that particular problem, so we can also prevent United States penetration into the Middle East. But let me tell you, and make no mistake, Kaviv and Rahel, ISIS is the fig leaf. This is the nucleus of what I said before, this Islamic Muslim NATO. Okay. And obviously, when Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, they are saying that this is only against ISIS. So the international community is saying,

okay, maybe it's really only against ISIS. But at the end of Idhil Fittar, when President Erdogan is calling his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fetachessi, and he's saying that whatever we're going to do in the Middle East, let us coordinate together. What I understand from this phone call is Turkey, slowly, slowly, is paving the way of Egypt into this alliance.

but maybe today because of this ideological friction between Erdogan and Sisi because of this Muslim Brotherhood ideology, so maybe they cannot see themselves the Egyptians as a part of this entity. But let's imagine that the Egyptians would be also inside this venture. So let's look at the Israel's borders. Lebanon, inside this pact. Syria, inside this pact. Jordan, inside this pact.

And Egypt, let's imagine. most probably will be admitted to this pact. And you, in your previous questions, already mentioned about the strength of the Turkish Navy. It means that Israel would be besieged from the Mediterranean and from all other borders. And let me be, you know, more creative for you. We also mentioned the Turkish military base in Somalia.

And of course, we have Turkish Navy there as well. So they can, technically speaking, can also close the Babel Mandap. Also, a lot will be besieged. May God forbid. But Turkey is the only country that it is capable of imposing a real siege against the state of Israel. So this is far more complex. And because of the fact that Turkey is not declaring any hostilities against the state of Israel, it is inside the gray zone. and since it is inside the gray zone, it is almost impossible for us to act against it. So this is far more complex

because it is in the gray zone and it is very legitimate. It is very legitimate. That's the new divide of the Middle East. Israel, Turkey going forward in 20 years. As a person who was born and raised in Turkey, I really love Turkey and I want Turkey to remain a friend of the state of Israel.

Make no mistake. I'm not trying to make an incitement here, but I have to, as an analyst who is watching after what is going on in the region, I must be alert and I must say the things that I'm seeing on the map, and this is what am I doing. But my agenda and the state of Israel's agenda towards Turkey is friendly. We are not looking after turning Turkey into our energy. This is something really ridiculous. We have lots of enemies. We do not have to add an additional one. We don't want it. Israel is doing a grave mistake. We are not explaining ourselves to the international community,

but especially in the Turkish language. Recently, the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, launched a Turkish X channel account on Twitter. on Twitter, right, and they are doing a great job. I think this should be also adopted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. And let me tell you, in a very ambitious state, Israel should form its own TV channel. Like we have Russia today, we have CNN, France 24, BBC, an English channel that would transmit the agenda of the state of Israel and yes if you're going to if you would like to call it propaganda please

call it propaganda I really don't care okay I really don't care because our voice is not heard outside of the borders of the state of Israel and we are not doing anything properly from time to time I'm doing my best to raise the voice of the state of Israel also in the Turkish language also English also in Azerbaijan but this is not enough this should be institutionalized. We have to internalize this as a national security goal. Yes, it is a national security goal. We are all using these smartphones. Okay, so we should enter into the smartphones of everyone. Our voices should be heard. We are only speaking in the battlefield which is not

enough. We should expand the Abraham Accords and we have to emphasize the Abraham access countries as an alternative to limit the Turkish penetration of this Muslim Brotherhood

access with Qatar. This is very problematic because Qatar has lots of money and Turkey has institutionalized state tradition. When you combine together this is a serious adversary, a serious opponent, if not adversary, at this stage. So therefore, Israel should be

cautious, should open its eyes, should explicate, explain itself in the Turkish language as well, and begin to treat Turkey as a part of the Middle East and not Europe, for God's sake. Turkey is a part of the Middle East and not Europe. At least their government. governments, behaviors are not European. They are very Middle Eastern. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Rahel. And I hope you, you know, I hope we do all the things you said. You're talking about an Al Jazeera for Israel. It's a good idea. It's a fantastic idea. It's a massive liability in a war that we don't have anything. Even we don't have a spokesperson, never mind have, not have, you know, real capabilities to get Israeli voices out into the world.

So that maybe should be something that people should be looking at seriously. And to me, you just upgraded the significance of the Imbram Accords in my mind, which was, you know, significant in many complex ways, including the internal debates within Islam. But now it's significant in a hard strategic, you know, future-looking kind of the next 25 years arc. It's a very significant potential boon to Israel. Thank you so much for joining us. And we will see you all in the next episode.