By Times of Israel— Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke Thursday by phone with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, amid an apparent thaw in relations between Jerusalem and Ankara. According to Lapid’s office, Cavusoglu called to inquire about the foreign minister’s health following his COVID-19 diagnosis. The phone call was the first between Israeli and Turkish…
By Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute— It has been more than a decade since Turkey and Israel, once strategic partners, broke up badly, with an angry Ankara passionately vowing to isolate Israel internationally. It has also been exactly four years since the two countries decided to give peace a chance once more and appointed ambassadors. They…
By Caroline Glick—- With our attention focused on other things – Israel’s elections, the legal fraternity’s aggressive lawfare against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump’s peace plan, to name just a few – profound strategic shifts have upended the strategic balance in the Middle East. Israel’s two most formidable adversaries – Iran and Turkey…
By Israel Hayom—- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is turning a blind eye to the fact that senior Hamas officials based in Istanbul are actively plotting terrorist attacks against Israel, British daily The Telegraph reported on Wednesday. According to the report, the interrogations of several terror suspects derived that senior Hamas operatives are using Turkey’s…
Recently, Turkish President (read: Dictator) Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his appearance before the UN General Assembly to rail against Israel and its “oppression” of the Palestinian Arabs. During the rant, Erdogan hinted at his militaristic ambitions (already being manifest in Turkey’s onslaught against the Kurds) by suggesting that if the international community remained unwilling to…
By Times of Israel— Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday charged that all the forces it has been fighting during the country’s eight-year civil war were “tools serving Israel directly or through the Americans,” and said he doesn’t recognize the existence of the modern-day nation of Israel. In a wide-ranging prerecorded interview on state television,…
By Associated Press— After spending four tumultuous days engulfed in the chaotic ramifications of the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper lashed out Thursday at Turkey for its military assault across the border on Syrian Kurdish fighters. Speaking at the German Marshall Fund, Esper said Turkey’s “unwarranted” invasion into Syria…
By Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel— Yamina party chairwoman Ayelet Shaked on Wednesday reissued a call for Kurdish statehood, urging the West to support the Kurds as Turkey launched a military campaign in northern Syria. “Our national memory requires us to revolt against violence directed against another nation. Such is the Turkish violence directed against…
By Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post— srael, which was almost non-existent in 1947, has continued until this day to seize Palestinian land with the aim of eliminating the state and the Deal of the Century will support those territorial ambitions,” Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. “Where are the…
By Israel Hayom—- The war of words between Turkey and Israel continued Friday when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rebuked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son for suggesting Istanbul — formerly Constantinople — was under Turkish occupation. The Turkish and Israeli leaders have been trading barbs this week, with Netanyahu calling Erdoğan a “dictator” and criticizing…