Turkey Returns to Palestine

In a recent speech, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey will take part in the Gaza task force and will maintain a peacekeeping garrison there to keep order and observe that the conditions of a ceasefire is maintained. 

“The agreement was signed and the road to a lasting peace in Gaza was opened,” Erdoğan said. “What matters most now is ensuring that the agreement is implemented to the letter.” As Turkish Red Crescent trucks crossed the border to bring aid to Gaza, he added almost as a polite afterthought that “returning to an environment of genocide would come at a very high cost”—although he didn’t name whom he appeared to be threatening. This isn’t the first time that Erdoğan’s recent speeches contained a hint of threat, as out of nowhere what might have been the worst case scenario for Israel has now come to fruition. 

For a country which was basically isolated even 10 years back, it is hard not to marvel at the return of Turkish power and how much it has evolved since its lonely support for rebels in Syria. For so long, Turkey was out of the game as Israel and Hamas both relied on Egypt and Qatar to negotiate. The rapid collapse of the Assad regime, as well as the total obliteration of Armenia by Azerbaijan, showed the stars aligning for Turkey. Around the same time Israel became bogged down in multiple conflicts. The last straw was the Israeli bombing of Qatar, an act that risked making the Jewish state a pariah in the region and ultimately resulted in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being forced to apologize to Qatar during a meeting in the Oval office. 

Readers of this magazine are well aware of the Turkish–Israeli rivalry that is now shaping up,  as the Middle East finds itself in a classic bloc formation scenario. While the chances of Israeli–Turkish conflict are heightened in Syria and Cyprus, a Turkish military presence in Gaza creates a new front. It would mean the Turkish intelligence apparatus within minutes of Tel Aviv. With the benefit of hindsight, the presence of Turkey’s intel chief İbrahim Kalın and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan—Erdoğan’s ostensible heir apparent, also from intelligence background—during the Gaza negotiation now seem very interesting. 

Erdoğan also has a fan in the current U.S. president, who recognized the Turkish size, local influence, hard power, technological advancement, and cheap labour, and is determined to make Ankara a hinge point of a new middle eastern strategy. 

“Turkey was fantastic too. President Erdoğan was fantastic. He really helped a lot, because he’s very respected. He’s got a very powerful nation. He’s got a very, very powerful military. And he helped a lot,” Trump told reporters en route to Egypt. Per reported news, Trump even disinvited Netanyahu from the Gaza peace process meeting in Egypt after Erdoğan threatened to pull out. 

Incidentally, this shows a strange dynamic familiar to international relations theorists. From Obama onwards, American presidents have tried to find a regional balance. The Democrats wanted to open up with Iran. That suffered from two disadvantages: Iran’s Shiite majority was in opposition to the Sunni majority of the region, and the Iranians lacked the power and capability to enforce a regional hegemony. Added to that, the Iranian strategy of relying on forward-positioned proxies failed when they started a direct conflict with Israel. Turkey, similar in size and manpower as Iran but without such baggage, didn’t suffer from these disadvantages. With Israelis mired in conflict from Lebanon to Yemen, it was Ankara that was ready to fill in the void. 

It is hard to make long-term predictions about a conflict in the early days of a ceasefire. But from Israel’s perspective, Turkish return to Gaza presents a strategic challenge. Turkey’s rapid military buildup, its expanding presence in Syria, Armenia, and Cyprus, and its prospective regional detente with Egypt are poised to recalibrate regional power dynamics significantly. The Israelis were initially worried about Turkish presence in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. Now they’ll have to contend with a Turkish military presence in Gaza.

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