A two-year-old speech by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he suggested that Turkey should take a more assertive posture toward Israel, recently recirculated online as if it were a fresh threat of military attack against Israel. Pro-Israel X accounts spread the claim through misleading translations, and it quickly gained traction among prominent commentators in both Israel and the United States . The story soon crossed into the mainstream, with news outlets, including The Telegraph , advancing the allegation before later withdrawing it. Even after the claim was exposed as false, parts of the Israeli media kept the story alive, with some coverage going further by casting Turkey as the “next Iran” and implying that Ankara could eventually threaten Israel militarily .
This episode comes amid a volatile political atmosphere, as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has widened a sense of regional instability and deepened fears of escalation across borders. In Turkey, the allegation that Ankara was somehow preparing to invade Israel fed directly into a growing belief that the country was being rhetorically and politically drawn into a trap. It also comes as the Turkish public was closely following a series of developments, from the attack on the Israeli consulate in Istanbul and direct exchanges between Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sustained anti-Turkey messaging from pro-Israel groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , which has helped feed debate in the United States over whether Turkey is becoming a rogue actor that should be expelled from NATO.
The rapid uptake of this false story did not create a new crisis. It brought existing tensions back to the surface, exposing how the Turkey-Israel rift is becoming harder to contain.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s recent remark that Israel was trying to create a new enemy for itself reflected that awareness at the highest level. In Turkey, the prospect of a future confrontation with Israel is increasingly discussed as a real possibility to deter, with the underlying assumption that Israel would be the more likely party to make the first move.
Syria, where the rivalry last flared
In Ankara’s reading, Syria is where the rivalry between Turkey and Israel has come closest to real military clashes. Turkey and the United States have broadly agreed that the new Syrian administration should be given a chance, while Israel has been deeply uneasy about the prospect of expanded Turkish influence there , despite the new Syrian government’s willingness to engage diplomatically with Israeli officials. Last year, Netanyahu openly suggested that Turkey could use Syria to attack Israel during an Oval Office appearance, but President Donald Trump urged him to be “reasonable” and suggested that problems with Turkey could be managed with his help. Trump’s comments were welcomed in Turkey as an important signal. But Israeli-Turkish tensions continued to bubble under the surface.
What keeps a wider rupture in check
For a while, public debate in Turkey took seriously the possibility that the deployment of Israeli air power and Turkish military assets over and inside Syria could eventually result in a clash between the two powers. But Turks took some reassurance from the fact that two non-military factors would help deter any serious Israeli adventurism.
The first is structural and long term: Turkey’s increasing importance to Europe and NATO at a time of renewed stress in the European security order. After the shock of Trump 2.0 and Europe’s realization that it had moved too slowly in increasing defense production and industrial readiness, Turkey’s decade-long investments in defense capacity have gained new value. Turkey’s purchase of Eurofighters , its potential inclusion in a European effort to boost defense spending, and its expanding joint production efforts reinforce Ankara’s view that its role in Europe’s security architecture is growing in ways that could raise the diplomatic and strategic costs of any Israeli escalation.
The second factor is more immediate and personal: the relationship between Trump and Erdogan. Any assessment of Turkey-Israel tensions has to account for Washington’s role. In that respect, Erdogan and Netanyahu share a similar instinct, seeking to manage the United States not only through institutions but through personalized ties with the U.S. president. Trump’s favorable remarks about Erdogan and his praise for the Turkish military as a strong NATO contributor have reinforced a basic conclusion in Ankara: whatever room Trump may give Israel elsewhere, he does not appear to see Turkey as an adversary that should be excluded from the regional balance. This does not mean Ankara is entirely reassured. Turkish officials know that Israel wields more influence in Washington and, historically at least, enjoys broader sympathy across the U.S. political system. They also know Erdogan is not alone in trying to manage Trump through personal diplomacy, and that Netanyahu has often done so more effectively. That is why, even when tensions surface, neither side has much interest in openly provoking Trump. Both understand that he remains the key external balancer in a potential crisis neither can fully control.
A rift hardening, not yet beyond repair
Turkish observers have closely followed remarks by figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has openly described Turkey as a strategic threat and implied that it could become the “next Iran.” These statements are not dismissed in Turkey as routine political rhetoric. They are read instead as signals of a broader shift in Israeli thinking, one that is increasingly echoed in parts of the Israeli media.
Before Oct. 7, Gaza did not resonate equally across Turkey’s political spectrum. For many government supporters, Gaza was already a deeply emotional issue. For parts of the opposition, by contrast, it was often viewed less as a shared national cause than as one of Erdogan’s recurring foreign policy themes. That is no longer the case. Recent polling shows that roughly one third of Turks now see Israel as a direct threat, reflecting a sharp shift in perception driven not only by Israeli rhetoric, but also by its increasingly aggressive and expansive regional military operations, including, most recently, against Iran and Lebanon.
That, in turn, has translated into much broader hostility toward Israel in Turkish public opinion — including among Erdogan’s opposition — with 93% of Turks now holding unfavorable views of Israel ; many Turkish people believe that, if Iran falls, Turkey could be next.
The changing sentiment has also begun to shape domestic politics in Turkey. Over the past year, Turkish politics has focused on hardening defenses on the home front and reducing domestic vulnerabilities against external pressure. This has not officially been framed as preparation for confrontation with Israel, but part of the urgency behind this policy shift comes from a growing belief that anti-Turkey sentiment in Israel is becoming more entrenched and ideological.
And yet, because there has been no deep societal hostility between Turks and Israelis, even in recent years , a direct military clash still cannot be treated as inevitable. American balancing power remains one brake, and Europe’s growing security interest in Turkey is another. More important is that Turkish foreign policy, for all its harsh rhetoric toward Netanyahu’s government, remains fundamentally pragmatic.
If Israel were eventually led by a more moderate government, one more invested in diplomacy and less committed to ideological confrontation, public opinion could shift again, and the path to normalization could reopen . But if the current trajectory continues, the greater risk is not that a military clash becomes inevitable, but that the relationship hardens into an enduring rivalry that would be far harder to reverse, even under different governments.