For half a century Turkey was Israel's closest friend in the Muslim world. That alliance did not end in a war. It eroded under one man's politics. Today Ankara hosts Hamas, compares Israel to Nazi Germany, and for years kept the trade flowing the whole time it did.
Turkey is not a battlefield enemy. It is a NATO member, a major trade partner, and was once Israel's most important strategic ally in the region. The story here is a relationship talked into the ground: from joint air drills and shared intelligence to a president who calls Hamas "liberators." It is the gap between what Ankara says and what it long quietly did, and it is a useful lesson in telling rhetoric from reality.
This is the part the current rhetoric erases: for fifty years, no Muslim country was closer to Israel than Turkey.
1949 · The first recognition
Less than a year after Israel's founding, Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country to recognise the Jewish state, part of its turn West as it sought NATO membership, which it won in 1952.
1996 · A military alliance
Two 1996 defence agreements made the two countries the closest security partners in the region: joint exercises, intelligence sharing, defence technology, and Israeli pilots training in Turkish airspace. They flew together in the multinational "Anatolian Eagle" drills.
The 1990s–2000s · Deep ties
Trade, tourism and water talks flourished. Turkey was a top holiday destination for Israelis, and the two governments coordinated against shared threats. The partnership looked permanent.
The break came not from Israel but from the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist politics after 2003.
January 2009 · "One minute"
At Davos, during a panel on Gaza, Erdogan turned on Israeli President Shimon Peres, snapped "when it comes to killing, you know well how to kill," and stormed off stage. He flew home to a hero's welcome. The moment became the symbol of the rupture.
31 May 2010 · The Mavi Marmara
A Turkish-led flotilla, organised with the Islamist IHH, tried to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza. When commandos boarded the lead ship, activists armed with iron bars and knives attacked them; nine were killed in the struggle. Turkey downgraded ties and expelled Israel's ambassador.
September 2011 · The UN's own verdict
Lead with the truth: the UN Secretary-General's Palmer Report found Israel's blockade "a legitimate security measure" that "complied with the requirements of international law," and called the flotilla's attempt to breach it "a dangerous and reckless act." It faulted the level of force at the point of contact, but the blockade itself was ruled legal. What the laws of war actually require →
Rhetoric is one thing. Giving a terrorist organisation a home is another.
Turkey hosts Hamas political leadership on its soil. In 2020 it granted Turkish citizenship to Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and Israeli officials say to roughly a dozen other operatives, some reportedly directing attacks from Istanbul (Turkey denies the characterisation). Three weeks after the 7 October 2023 massacre, Erdogan told his parliament that "Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a group of mujahideen," called its members liberators, and cancelled a planned trip to Israel. In July 2024 he appeared to threaten Israel militarily outright. Who Hamas says it is, in its own words →
Here is the part that exposes the performance. For all the fire, the business never stopped, until very late.
While Erdogan called Israel a Nazi state and a child-killer, his country went on selling it steel, cement and fuel and welcoming nearly a million Israeli tourists a year. Bilateral trade grew to roughly $9.5 billion at its peak. Ankara even restored full diplomatic relations in 2022. Only in May 2024, more than fifteen years after the Davos walkout, did Turkey finally halt trade over Gaza, and even then UN data showed Turkish goods still reaching Israel through third countries. The outrage was loud; the cash register stayed open. Naming that gap is half the lesson.
Erdogan's words have repeatedly crossed from anti-Israel into antisemitic. He has said Israel embodies "the spirit of Hitler," likened it to Nazi Germany, and called Zionism "a crime against humanity," drawing condemnation from the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The dark precedent runs deep: Turkey's own 1942 Wealth Tax deliberately ruined its Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities, taxing non-Muslims at many times the Muslim rate and sending those who could not pay to labour camps. The old hatred in new words →