Eurasia Press & News
Turkey’s Erdogan is striking a neutral stance in the Gaza conflict, avoiding incendiary rhetoric that would derail his charm offensive with the West and offering to mediate between Israel and Hamas.
As the conflict in the Gaza Strip enters its third day, Turkey’s offer to mediate between Israel and Hamas is drawing mixed reactions with Israel’s envoy to Ankara, Irit Lillian, saying it is “too early” to talk about mediation offers amid worries that Turkish-Israeli reconciliation efforts may collapse under the weight of the Palestinian issue.
Erdogan held separate phone calls with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas today in which he assured both leaders that Turkey was doing its best for calm to be restored. According to a readout from the Turkish Presidency Erdogan told Herzog that Israel should avoid steps that would “harm the people of Gaza collectively and indiscriminately” and further escalate suffering violence in the region.
In a briefing with journalists on Sunday, Lillian said “mediation comes at a different point in time. Right now we are unfortunately counting the dead, we are trying to heal the wounded, we don’t even know what is the number of citizens abducted,” she said.
Lillian’s comments came as Erdogan reiterated Ankara’s formal position that lasting peace in the Middle East “is only possible through a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict” during the inauguration of the first Syriac Orthodox church to be built in modern Turkey. Recalling that the Ottomans had ruled over Jerusalem for more than four centuries, Erdogan said Turkey would ramp up diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis. However, the establishment of an independent and geographically integrated Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders, with (east) Jerusalem as its capital was “a necessity that can no longer be delayed,” Erdogan said.
On Saturday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry struck a decidedly neutral tone, not pointing fingers at either Israel or Hamas, asserting rather that it “strongly condemns” the loss of civilian lives and that it was “in contact with all relevant parties to help end the violence.”
In a phone call Sunday with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken encouraged Turkey’s “continued engagement and highlighted the United States’ unwavering focus on halting the attacks by Hamas and securing the release of all hostages,” according to the State Department’s readout of the call. Blinken noted via the X platform, formerly Twitter, that he had urged Fidan during the call for Turkey’s “advocacy for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately.”
A former Turkish diplomat who served as an ambassador in the region praised Turkey’s current stance noting that “it is with this calm and measured tone that Ankara can play a constructive role.”
“Erdogan refrained from injecting his usual incendiary Islamist rhetoric into his public comments despite expectations from his base to do so. He needs to be commended for that,” the source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
In the Arab street Erdogan is lionized as one of the few regional defenders of the Palestinian cause, a reputation that has survived the recent thaw in relations that saw Herzog meet with Erdogan in Ankara last year and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet last month with the Turkish leader on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.
Israel has long accused Erdogan of providing a haven for Hamas leaders and operatives, a claim echoed by other regional governments — Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Turkey does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization and Erdogan met its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in July together with the Palestinian Authority’s Abbas in Ankara, part of a bid to mend fences between the rival Palestinian leaders. Erdogan has never concealed he is pro-Palestine bent, famously scolding Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2008 over the deaths of Palestinians.
The signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Gulf monarchies and Israel’s growing links with Greece and Cyprus that have led to Turkey’s regional diplomatic isolation prompted a change in position encompassing rapprochement with Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Greece as well. Since last year, Turkey has reportedly expelled dozens of Hamas operatives, some of them with ties to Hamas’ military wing, according to unnamed Israeli officials cited by the Israeli media.
The former Turkish diplomat conceded that there remained a trust deficit making it hard for Turkey to play mediator and not just on the Israeli side. “For Hamas as well given its recent steps, Turkey is no longer the trustworthy partner it used to be and may even be viewed by hard-liners as a collaborator,” he said.
Either way, any further conflagration of the conflict that would, for example, draw in Iran would be disastrous for all regional actors, not least Turkey as it seeks to repair its tottering economy. Gonul Tol, director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program, said if Israel were to go to war against Iran, Ankara would be faced with “the near impossible task of trying to manage both sides” as it is doing in the conflict with Ukraine, except that in this case “the stakes would be far higher and the balance far harder to strike.” Iran, which remains Turkey’s sole land route to Central Asian markets, is a major supplier of natural gas and could turn against Turkish forces in Syria, where the two countries support opposing sides but accommodate the other’s interests.
Ground zero
Many believe that Saturday’s unprecedented attack by Hamas, which has left more than a thousand people dead, at least 700 of them Israelis, is of such seismic proportions that conventional analysis no longer applies.
Louis Fishman, an Israeli American academic with deep knowledge of Turkey, reckons that Ankara’s mediation offers are unrealistic at this time. However, with Fidan, a pragmatist, at the helm of Turkish diplomacy, chances of surviving the crisis and forging even stronger bonds is likely, depending on how the situation unfolds. In the meantime, “Turkey needs to understand that nothing will be the same, that Israel will no longer be able to maintain ‘business as usual,’” Fishman told Al-Monitor.
“It is almost certain that Israel will now pressure Turkey to tone down any public support for [Hamas] including providing it shelter and free movement. If relations are to remain on track, Turkey will heed this and reassess what its role might be with Hamas,” he noted.
That said, should Erdogan publicly express sympathy with the Israeli people who are being held hostage or are kidnapped and stress the need to free them, “that would be very surprising, that would go a very long way.”
Alan Makovsky, a veteran analyst of Turkish affairs and a senior fellow for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, is less sanguine.
“The idea that Turkey could mediate this crisis, or that Israel would accept its mediation, is fatuous. Erdogan is a long-time Hamas sympathizer, and even in the wake of this ugly operation, he has been unable clearly and unequivocally to label Hamas or its assault on and kidnapping of civilians as ‘terrorist.’ Nor has he even called on Hamas to release its hostages, even civilian ones,” Makovsky said.
“Beyond that, Israel is interested in retaliation and trying to restore deterrence now; it isn’t interested in ‘mediation’ any more than Turkey was interested in a mediator between it and the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] after the recent attack on the Interior Ministry,” Makovsky added, in reference to the Oct. 1 PKK-claimed suicide bomb attack on the Security Directorate headquarters in Ankara.
Meanwhile, Qatar, a staunch supporter of Hamas, has reportedly already begun mediating between the sides. Negotiations are ongoing for a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, according to a source in the militant group quoted by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
“With US support, Qatar is seeking to accomplish an urgent agreement that would lead to the release of Israeli women captured by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian female prisoners in Israeli prisons,” the anonymous source told Xinhua Sunday. Israel has not confirmed that any such mediation is underway.
As the death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip continue to rise, public fury is growing among millions of pious Turks who support the Palestinian cause, said Osman Atalay, an official at the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a conservative Turkish nongovernmental organization that operates across the globe. Atalay told Al-Monitor that mass protests after Friday afternoon prayers are likely to take place across the country. However, Atalay added, “the people understand the president’s moderate stance in these perilous and unpredictable times.”
