Netanyahu focuses on Turkey before Israel election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is focusing on Turkey as a security threat before Israel’s October 27 election, linking Ankara to a dispute over a base in northern Syria and featuring Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in campaign billboards.

Warplanes bombed a base in northern Syria on Tuesday a short drive from the Turkish border. Netanyahu said Turkey was seeking to establish a military presence there and that, after it ignored Israel’s warnings, “We made sure they understood it more clearly.”

Netanyahu’s campaign has put up billboards showing Erdogan and other leaders with the caption: “They want Netanyahu to lose.” Erdogan has been a strong critic of Israel’s offensive in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, and relations have deteriorated over Israel’s interception of activist flotillas from Turkey seeking to force aid into Gaza.

Turkey is a NATO member, and Erdogan has a warm relationship with US President Donald Trump. The US ambassador to Ankara condemned Israel over the Syria strikes.

Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s centre-left opposition Democrats, called the attack in Syria “provocative and dangerous” and warned it “brings us closer to a confrontation with Turkey and deepens the rift with our allies, chief among them the United States.”

Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said Netanyahu was using “the anti-Turkish card” and may see it as a way to unify his base. Gonul Tol, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said more direct action against Turkey could make Netanyahu look like “a reckless leader who would do anything to cling to power.”

Maher Tamran, a writer and political researcher in Damascus, said Syria’s challenge was to avoid becoming an arena for other countries’ conflicts and to use Turkish-Israeli rivalry to reclaim sovereignty.