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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a ceremony for the handover of new vehicles to the gendarmerie and police forces in Istanbul, on Friday, November 28, 2025.\u00a0[Murad Sezer\/Reuters]<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Relations between Israel and Turkey are at their lowest point. Since their rupture in 2010, they have gone through several ups and downs, but they have not been restored \u2013 not even partially. There have been attempts in the past, culminating in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s phone apology to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013 for errors that led to the death of nine Turkish nationals in 2010 in the Gaza flotilla incident. There was also a meeting between the two leaders in September 2023 in New York, a few days before the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, but they were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
Israel had already assessed since 2010 that Turkey\u2019s shift toward political Islam, its cultivated ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the very good level of understanding with Iran on the issues of Syria and beyond, as well as the underground links between Turkey and Qatar that reached Hamas were definitive, and rendered Ankara a problematic partner. In fact, the Turkish president\u2019s attempt to project himself as the main spokesperson for the Palestinian positions, and a defender of the Muslim world (with his attacks on China over the Uyghurs, on Russia over the Tatars and on Europe over Islamophobia), became, over time, inherent in Turkish foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Of course, even during the years of the deep crisis in bilateral relations, trade between the two countries was maintained at high levels and even showed an upward trend for a period of time, while business circles in Israel urged the government to export natural gas through Turkey, even if that meant that the positions of the Republic of Cyprus on maritime zones and the delimitation agreement signed by Nicosia and Tel Aviv as early as 2010 would be ignored. It is true that part of the Israeli Foreign Ministry establishment identified Erdogan as the main, if not the only, problem in bilateral relations, looking forward to a change of leadership for them to be normalized.<\/p>\n
However, Erdogan\u2019s extreme rhetoric has certainly imbued a large part of Turkish society with similar views on Israel, something that is confirmed in all public opinion polls, with an overwhelming 93% of Turks having a negative view of Israel (the highest percentage of any country in the world). Of course, most countries widely disapprove of the decisions of the current Israeli government, even the United States and Germany, but in the case of Turkey this attitude has been stable and taken root over many years, which is largely attributed to Erdogan\u2019s decision to demonize Israel, in his attempt to become the ultimate reference point for Muslims. In a poll in October 2024, 89.4% of Turks believed that Israel had territorial ambitions toward their country, and in March 2025, 83.5% placed Israel at the top of the list of enemy states.<\/p>\n
In Israel, too, the public\u2019s view of Turkey is no better: In December 2025, in a related poll, only 13% of Israelis considered Turkey a reliable partner, with the vast majority considering it a competitive force. In the eyes of many Israelis and part of the political elite, Erdogan\u2019s Turkey is evolving into a second Iran. Netanyahu\u2019s great political opponent, Naftali Bennett, who is leading in most polls ahead of the elections to be held in 2026, believes that Turkey is part of an anti-Zionist axis similar to the Iranian one, that \u201ca new Turkish threat is emerging,\u201d and that Israel \u201cmust act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some analysts, however, believe that the two Israeli politicians are investing in fear, so targeting Turkey is convenient. Still, the Tel Aviv-Ankara confrontation is not only personal, but also concerns a clash between their common ambition for regional hegemony, which is clearly visible on various fronts, such as Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean, and even the Aegean, where many Turkish commentators, probably projecting the official position, see an attempt by Israel to surround them, using Greece and Cyprus as its proxies. The possibility of an armed conflict between Israel and Turkey should be ruled out, since the latter is a NATO member-state, however, whenever Tel Aviv is given the opportunity to send an emphatic message \u2013 as it did in the recent past by striking Turkish military bases in Syria \u2013 it will repeat it.<\/p>\n
It is estimated, however, that the damage at the societal level is also great. Israeli Jews have \u2013 also for security reasons \u2013 excluded Turkey from their tourist destinations, with a high-ranking Israeli diplomat telling me recently that \u201cTurkey went from being a privileged destination for economic cooperation, tourism, and even medical tourism, to being a synonym of \u2018stay away.\u2019\u201d As a result, there has been a significant transfer of business capital from Turkey to Greece and Cyprus.<\/p>\n
The elections in Israel are not expected to dramatically change the way relations with Turkey are approached. Much will depend on the stance of the United States and whether it will want to pressure the two countries to reduce tensions. In the security architecture being formed in the region, the agendas of Israel and Turkey, as they currently stand, do not \u201cmeet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Constantinos Filis is an associate professor at the American College of Greece and director of its Institute of Global Affairs.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n