With All Eyes On Iran - Turkey Is The Real Danger To Israel

Amid a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that jolted Istanbul Wednesday causing multiple injuries, experts are sounding the alarm over the shifting ground of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's continued consolidation of power, support of Islamist terror groups, and the threat his regime poses to Israel, the Middle East, and the free world at large.

In a signal of the Islamist regime's ongoing ties with Islamist terrorist groups, Turkey's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin held talks with Hamas leaders over the weekend to discuss the delivery of aid to Gaza amid Israel's continued war against the terror group there. According to The Times of Israel, Kalin "reassured them of Turkey's ongoing support and said Turkey would firmly oppose any new efforts to occupy or annex Palestinian territory." 

Since Israel's war on Hamas began after the terror group's October 7 attack on the Jewish state, in which they killed 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages, Erdogan has repeatedly called Israel a "terrorist state," accused it of committing "genocide" in Gaza, and claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "worse than Hitler."

While the Trump administration appears to be primarily focused on dismantling Iran's nuclear program, experts say the greater threat to Israel and arguably the entire region is Erdogan's Islamist regime. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former CIA operative in Turkey, contended in The Atlantic over the weekend that Erdogan is "setting the stage for a clash with Israel" by "consolidateing power at home and preparing to project it abroad." He added that "Turkey has quickly emerged as perhaps the greatest danger to the Jewish state in the Middle East."

Gerecht went on to detail how "Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have cowed their liberal opponents, co-opted most of the Turkish press, purged and restaffed the Turkish military -- with special zeal after crushing a 2016 coup attempt -- and revamped Turkey's intelligence service." He further noted that in March, Erdogan "arrested and falsely charged as a terrorist the most potent political rival he has faced since becoming prime minister in 2003: the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu." After protests broke out in Turkey as a result, "the regime has tightened its grip and arrested hundreds of demonstrators."

Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, concurs.

"President Erdogan is already past the two-decade mark in his leadership of Turkey," he explained during "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" Tuesday. "When he came into office, people thought maybe he'd be a pragmatist, that he could combine Islamic democracy. Look, if you have to put an adjective before democracy, it's not a democracy. ... As he's consolidated power, his true ideology has come through. He's a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte through and through. And in that regard, he really wants nothing more than the defeat of the United States, the defeat of Europe, and the eradication of Israel."

Rubin further pointed out the extent of Erdogan's ambitions in the Middle East and the surrounding region. Some may say he wants to reestablish the Ottoman Empire because his own people, his own aides do. When you look at the maps in the Turkish Defense Ministry, for example, they include much of the former Ottoman Empire," including places like Greece, Cyprus, and other parts of the Balkans, as well as Syria, where Turkey is "trying to almost establish a colonial presence."

As for Israel, Rubin highlighted further cause for concern. "So many of the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, both before and after October 7th, 2023, were actually planned or financed from Istanbul, Turkey, from the former seat of the Ottoman Caliphate," he remarked. "That is something that has really raised the concern in counterterrorism circles, not only in the United States and in Israel, but throughout much of the Arab world as well."

Rubin underscored additional evidence that Erdogan will likely take an extremist, hardline approach to fill the power vacuum among Hamas and the Palestinians that will likely occur in the wake of the eventual passing of 89-year-old Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

"The statistic I always give to let people know how much Turkey has changed actually comes from Turkey's own Interior Ministry, and that is since Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in Turkey, the murder rate of women inside Turkey has increased 1,400%," he noted. "And that's because of the sense of impunity that religious conservatives have now as they conduct honor crimes and so forth inside Turkey."

Complicating the situation for the U.S. is the fact that Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a political and military alliance of North America and much of Europe.

"Turkey can be the Trojan horse inside NATO," Rubin argued. "Why don't we just kick Turkey out? Because there's no mechanism inside NATO in order to kick someone out. ... What I believe is happening right now is Turkey sees that it can do more for our enemies and for its own noxious ideology by remaining inside NATO to do two things. One is to block consensus and therefore basically paralyze the organization. 

The second actually is even scarier, and that has to do with its nuclear program. Turkey is opening a Russian-built nuclear reactor this year. ... Turkey can hide behind NATO's Article 5 ... If they are attacked, all NATO members have to respond as if they themselves were attacked. And so, what I'm afraid is happening is Turkey is using its NATO membership in order to develop a nuclear weapon, and it's going to remain in NATO until it becomes its own nuclear power."

Still, Rubin observed that there are ways for other members of NATO to avoid recognizing Article 5 if it concerns Turkey. "[W]hen you actually read Article 5, you have to get NATO agreeing that there has been ... an attack. And so, it gives NATO members like the United States, like Germany, like France, a way out to say, 'You know what? We don't actually think that this qualifies for Article 5.' So Turkey's taking a gamble that we are going to come to their assistance. I think we should make clear to Turkey that we are not going to do that in advance."

As to Turkey's current approach toward building a coalition among its Islamic neighbor countries, Rubin insisted that Erdogan's style is notably authoritarian. "It's less of a coalition than almost like a Chinese-style 'We are on top and you are our proxies that you listen to us,'" he described. "So when you look at what Turkey is doing, for example, in Libya or in Somalia or in Syria, they're not approaching these states as equals. They're approaching these states as their proxies, and they expect, in true Muslim Brotherhood fashion, that Turkey speaks and these other countries will listen."

"But again," Rubin concluded, "we are woefully blind if we don't recognize and counter what Turkey is now doing."

Originally published at The Washington Stand