President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finds himself jumping between two fires – defending Hamas on the one hand and over Turkish-Israeli trade on the other – failing to please either his Western partners or the grassroots supporters of his Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Under the AKP’s two decades of rule, Ankara’s pro-Palestinian rhetoric coupled with Islamist rhetoric has intensified, but commercial ties between Turkey and Israel have also expanded. Bilateral trade between the two countries grew from $1.4 billion in 2002 to $8.9 billion by 2022. Last year, Israel was the 10th largest buyer of Turkish goods and the 29th largest source of Turkish imports.
The Gaza crisis came at a time when Erdogan was hoping to further advance recently normalized ties with Israel, which likely exacerbated his anger, reminiscent of his memorable angry comments to Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009 after another war in Gaza had fizzled Turkish mediation efforts between Israel and Syria.
The current war broke out shortly after Turkey restored full diplomatic ties with Israel, hoping to play a central role in energy issues in the eastern Mediterranean. After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York in September, Erdogan said Netanyahu would visit Turkey in October or November and that energy issues would be high on the bilateral agenda, including joint drilling efforts in the eastern Mediterranean and shipping Israeli natural gas through Turkey to Europe. This plan has been shelved for now.
