Since Hamas carried out its barrage of deadly attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, Turkey has come under the spotlight for its relationship with the Islamist militant group. Ankara has been a material supporter and enabler of Hamas since 2011. However, until last week, this was mainly perceived by the United States to be a problem only in that it served as a roadblock in Turkey’s attempts to normalize its relationship with Israel. Now, the United States and Israel will likely increase pressure on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cut ties with Hamas.
What are the chances that Erdogan will comply with such a request—and why does he have a relationship with Hamas to begin with?
Forget cutting ties with Hamas; Erdogan is unlikely to even unequivocally denounce Hamas’s recent atrocities, which killed approximately 1,200 Israeli citizens, as a brazen act of terrorism. The reason for this is simple: Erdogan sympathizes with Hamas’s cause. In a tweet he sent addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018, Erdogan remarked, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization and Palestinians are not terrorists. It is a resistance movement that defends the Palestinian homeland against an occupying power.”
And indeed, since Hamas’s latest attack, Erdogan has been content in stating that “it’s our responsibility to stand with the oppressed” and inviting “all humanity to take action to stop the unprecedented brutality in Gaza.”
This is not a new way of thinking about Hamas for Erdogan. In his worldview, Hamas represents the very essence of the Palestinian liberation movement. That view is widely representative of how Turkish Islamists have long framed the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Erdogan was schooled in this movement, and even before he became the leader of Turkey, he freely aired antisemitic and anti-Israeli views. In an attempt to settle into his new role after becoming Turkey’s prime minister in 2003, he suppressed his actual feelings until the 2009 annual World Economic Forum in Davos. At this occasion, he rebuked then-Israeli President Shimon Peres, accusing the Israeli government of killing Palestinian children.
Increasing tensions further, Erdogan then authorized an “aid flotilla” to Gaza in 2010. The small fleet of Turkish boats attempted to breach the Israeli Navy’s blockade, resulting in the death of several individuals on board one of its vessels, Mavi Marmara, after it was stormed by Israeli special forces. The incident resulted in a visible decline in Turkey’s long and prosperous relationship with Israel and is arguably one of Erdogan’s greatest strategic foreign-policy blunders.
Until then, Ankara and Israel had developed not only a close government-to-government relationship, but also a people-to-people one. Israelis would flock en masse to Turkish coastal towns during summers, while Turkey’s military and intelligence services benefited from a tight-knit relationship with their Israeli counterparts, which helped modernize Turkey’s tanks and air force fleet. This all went away after the Mavi Marmara incident. Soon after, Erdogan began openly cultivating a relationship with Hamas.
The decision to nurture that relationship is wholly Erdogan’s personal choice and not a strategic decision representing the institutional preferences of the Turkish state. At this point, though, the Hamas relationship has deep roots in Turkey and will be difficult to uproot.
With Erdogan’s full awareness, Hamas maintains political offices in Turkey, and Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Saleh al-Arouri, have openly met with Erdogan many times. In the cases of Arouri and Haniyeh, Ankara has provided them with Turkish passports and residency, which has allowed them to travel internationally unhindered. Arouri, Hamas’s so-called West Bank chief, is a U.S.-designated terrorist with a $5 million bounty on his head. He celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre on social media and is likely one of the masterminds of the attacks.
Additionally, Turkey may also be providing military support to Hamas. In July this year, Israeli authorities said they had seized 16 tons of explosive material that originated in Turkey and was bound for Gaza, apparently intended for building Hamas rockets.
Erdogan’s championing of Hamas has made the organization and its cause popular among his base of voters. Just in the past week alone, Turkey has seen several public rallies, all condemning Israel. Barely two days after the deadly attacks, Huda-Par—a radical Islamist party and a partner in Erdogan’s governing coalition—held a celebratory rally outside the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, chanting, “Israel be damned!”
A day later in Istanbul, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (known by its Turkish acronym as IHH)—a Turkish “aid” organization known for its alleged support for jihadi causes—held a rally in Istanbul, where some of its supporters vowed to kill U.S. troops deployed in the region, and participants denounced the United States as the “Great Satan” for its support of Israel.
These are significant developments, as public rallies have largely been banned in Turkey since 2013. The two that took place in Istanbul could not have taken place without the express permission of the government.
As the rallies were being conducted, Erdogan volunteered to mediate between Israel and Hamas, to prevent the conflict from escalating. Given his relationship with and views on Hamas, it is clear that no one takes him seriously. On Thursday, Turkish media reported that Israel had withdrawn all of its diplomats, including its ambassador, from the country over security concerns related to the protests. (The Israeli Embassy reportedly declined to comment on the reports.)
It seems Erdogan is once again ready to burn bridges with Israel, even though in early 2022, he had begun an attempt to normalize Turkey’s relationship with the country, hosting Israeli President Isaac Herzog and once again exchanging ambassadors. In doing so, Erdogan hoped to break Ankara from its relative state of isolation in the region as well as win over pro-Israel figures in Washington so that the U.S. Congress would look more favorably upon Ankara and remove its strong objections to selling Turkey weapons.
Such an instrumental motivation should not be surprising. Despite having spent nearly a decade trying to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, Erdogan since 2022 has tried to rebuild ties with Damascus, motivated by a desire to gain a share in the reconstruction pie of Syria, as well as to repatriate a symbolic number of Syrian refugees.
Yet Erdogan now seems ready to walk away from this process of rebuilding ties with Israel. All this demonstrates that the Turkish leader does not shy away from foreign-policy U-turns if he feels they are necessary.
Many speculated that establishing substantive ties would not be possible until Turkey stopped hosting Hamas on its soil. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks provided Ankara a unique opportunity for Erdogan to stand with Israel, and one which he is likely to squander. Rather than condemn Hamas and distance himself from a militant group, Erdogan is poised to once again sacrifice Turkey’s strategic interests in favor of his Islamist beliefs. He has already intimated at launching another aid flotilla to Gaza and announced his intention to coordinate a response to Israel’s pending military operation into Gaza with his Iranian counterpart, President Ebrahim Raisi. This is at a time when many Western governments are wondering about the extent of Iran’s involvement in the attacks.
In charting such a course, Erdogan is once again acting in a manner that confirms the West’s deepest suspicions about his true affinities. As the Biden administration continues to shore up support for Israel through U.S. Secretary of State Antony’s Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy efforts, the only stop missing from his tour of the region is Ankara. Turkey appears to have made its choice to stand with Hamas, only because Erdogan wanted it this way.
