An oversized billboard that looms over a major highway into Turkey’s capital Ankara depicts Benjamin Netanyahu as a pig next to a red swastika and the words: “Baby killer Israel”.
A few hundred miles away in Istanbul, a storefront sign warns Israel, as well as the US and Europe, that they will “drown in the blood you spill”, while protesters outside the city’s historic Egyptian spice market hoist placards calling for the “defeat” of the Nato alliance of which Turkey is a member.
Bursts of anti-Israel and anti-western rhetoric are not unusual in Turkey, but such sentiment is on the rise as the war in Gaza rages, fanned by the increasingly bellicose tone of the country’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Turkish president has in recent months ratcheted up his condemnation of Israel and its Gaza offensive, in contrast to his carefully calibrated tone in the days that followed Hamas’s October 7 attack. The shift has coincided with a drop in his popularity amid a long-running economic crisis.
Erdoğan has labelled Israel a “terror state” that threatens “all humanity”, called Netanyahu a “genocidal murderer” and the “Hitler of our age”, and intimated that his troops may enter Israel to defend the Palestinians.
He also turned on Israel’s western backers, lashing out at US lawmakers who opened their arms to Netanyahu as he delivered a speech to Congress in July.
“Just as the names of those who applauded Hitler’s genocide speech at the Nazi Reichstag 85 years ago go down in history with shame, those who gave a standing ovation to Hitler Netanyahu’s lies will not be able to clean the black mark stuck to their hands,” Erdoğan said.
In a sign of the growing tensions, more than a dozen members of the nationalist Youth Union of Turkey were detained by Turkish authorities this week after they attacked two US marines who were on shore leave in Izmir, one of Turkey’s most west-leaning cities.
Erdoğan has been careful to avoid crossing a line with the US, and diplomats say relations between the Nato allies remain constructive, especially after Washington agreed earlier this year to sell Turkey billions of dollars’ worth of F-16 jets.
The Turkish president has, however, followed up his sharpening rhetoric against Israel with action.
Ankara has launched a trade embargo against Israel, sought to join South Africa’s case in The Hague accusing the country of genocide, and invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to address parliament.
Ankara, which has long harboured Hamas political operatives, has also warmly embraced the militant organisation, with Erdoğan hosting its late leader Ismail Haniyeh in April and likening the group to the “liberators” in Turkey’s own battle for independence a century ago.
Turkish newspapers and television stations, the vast bulk of which are aligned with the government, have amplified Erdoğan’s rhetoric with stinging criticism of Israel and its supporters. The president’s top lieutenants have also joined the fray, highlighting how Erdoğan’s sentiment is filtering through Turkey’s bureaucracy.
Salih Bıçakcı, a research fellow at Germany’s Institute for International and Security Affairs, said this latest iteration was part of the “rollercoaster” relationship between Israel and Turkey that dates back to the foundation of the former.
Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognise Israel after the country was established in 1948, but the two have often feuded. Ankara joined Arab calls for Israel to give up territory it took in the 1967 Six-Day war, and later downgraded diplomatic relations after Israel annexed East Jerusalem and declared the city its “eternal, undivided capital”. Turkey was also among the first countries to recognise Palestine as an independent state.
Yet Erdoğan, whose rise to power at the turn of the millennium was rooted in Islamist politics, has also sought to balance broad support within Turkey for the Palestinian cause against the economic, trade and tourism opportunities from strengthening ties with Israel.
Bilateral trade between Israel and Turkey reached a peak of $9.1bn in 2022, compared with $2.6bn in 2009, according to Israeli customs data. Turkish businesses also operate in Israel, with Istanbul-based Zorlu Energy owning a 25 per cent stake in a vital Israeli power plant. Turkey also hosted almost 800,000 Israeli tourists in 2023, according to tourism ministry data.
Ankara had sought to bolster relations with Israel before the October 7 attack. The two countries restored full diplomatic ties in 2022 after a four-year dispute over the killing of protesters in Gaza. Erdoğan met Netanyahu for the first time in September 2023 at a UN general assembly meeting.
“[Erdoğan] was willing to co-operate and cultivate that relationship with Israel and has done so for a long time”, said Bıçakcı, while also noting that some of the president’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) “has always been against Israel”.
The Turkish president’s more vitriolic stance comes as his poll ratings have fallen at home as a result of the country’s economic woes.
A programme to rebuild the economy put in place after Erdoğan’s re-election in May 2023 has helped woo foreign investors, but many Turks are reeling from years of runaway inflation. There are also rising indications that Turkey’s once-rapid growth is slowing, while the government is peeling away populist policies that helped dull the effects of high prices.
Less than a fifth of voters would back the AKP if new parliamentary elections were called, the lowest level since Erdoğan co-founded the AKP in 2002, according to a July survey by Ankara-based Metropoll.
Emre Peker at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group drew a link between the issues. “Given the toll from Turkey’s economic rebalancing on households and local business, not to mention the president’s dismal approval ratings, Erdoğan will be primarily interested in foreign policy interventions that help him domestically,” he said.
Murat Somer, a political-science professor at Istanbul’s Özyeğin University, said the president’s rhetoric would appeal particularly to the Islamist-leaning part of his AKP base.
“It’s been a constant during the government of the AKP to . . . redefine politics . . . where the AKP sees an advantage and where it can disarm the domestic political opposition,” Somer said.
This could help blunt the impact of criticism of Erdoğan from the Islamist New Welfare party, which captured some AKP municipalities in the March elections on a platform that heavily criticised the government’s stance on Gaza.
Analysts also said that, given the significant fluctuations in Israeli-Turkish relations over the years and Erdoğan’s typically pragmatic approach to foreign affairs, it was possible that warmer ties between the two countries would be restored once the Gaza conflict ends.
For now, Peker warned, “opportunistic foreign policies and any diplomatic wins . . . are unlikely to materially improve Erdoğan and the AKP’s record-low polling.
“That would require a discernible change in voters’ everyday lives.”
