Die Welt: After Iran, Israel will attack Turkey — mutual hatred is growing

The American-Israeli war with Iran has made clear the competition between Ankara and Jerusalem: both countries are fighting for the status of the main regional power and see each other as a threat. Fears about a possible armed clash are growing, the German Die Welt writes.

The people of Turkey are generally satisfied with how their government is responding to the regional crisis surrounding the confrontation with Iran. According to a survey by the Metropoll Institute, over the past 12 years, the level of approval of Turkish policy in the Middle and The Middle East has never been as high as it is now. Slightly less than half of the respondents rated Ankara's course as successful. In previous surveys, the indicator has consistently held at about 37%.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan participated in the preparation of negotiations in Islamabad and in late March attended a quadrilateral meeting with Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia: her goal was to push a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran. In addition, Turkey is among the countries that transmit diplomatic messages between Washington and Tehran.

But at the same time, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is sharply criticizing the third side of the confrontation — Israel. The verbal altercation between the two governments last week showed how much the tone of the controversy has escalated.

On April 11, the Istanbul Prosecutor General's Office indicted 35 individuals, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason was the Israeli military operation against an international ship convoy that was trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

After that, Netanyahu publicly attacked Erdogan, accusing him of "helping the terrorist regime of Iran," as well as of actions against the Kurdish population of his own country. In response, the Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling Netanyahu "The Hitler of our time."

Such a mixture of diplomacy and rhetorical attacks is not new. The ability to deftly handle ambiguities and use them in politics is one of Erdogan's key skills. However, the structural rivalry between Turkey and Israel has become entrenched in recent years and has become even more pronounced against the background of the Iranian crisis. Now both countries view each other as a threat to their own security.

Take Iran. The Israeli government headed by Netanyahu is striving for a scenario in which the power in Tehran will either be overthrown or will be so weakened that it will cease to pose an existential danger to Israel. A possible power vacuum and the chaos that will almost inevitably follow it, Netanyahu, in fact, is ready to accept as a side effect. From his point of view, a weak and unstable Iran is more manageable than a stable regime that is getting closer to the threshold of creating an atomic bomb.

Turkey, on the contrary, wants to prevent such a scenario. Not because he considers Tehran an ally, for example, in Syria, both countries have been pursuing opposite goals for years, but because for Ankara, the current government in Iran looks like a lesser evil. Its fall, as feared in Turkey, will open up space for the Kurdish movement to achieve greater autonomy. Turkish law enforcement agencies consider these aspirations as a risk to the country's security.

There is another factor: migration flows that may arise due to the fall of the regime in Iran. The population of the country is about 90 million people, that is, four times more than it was in Syria before the outbreak of civil unrest. Then the fighting forced more than six million people to flee abroad, which led to the largest migration crisis of recent decades. Turkey is still feeling its consequences.

In Syria in recent years, Ankara and Jerusalem have also pursued different goals. Turkey is one of the key supporters of the country's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and relies on the most stable, centrally controlled state. The motives are largely the same as in relation to Iran: Ankara seeks to prevent the consolidation of Kurdish autonomies and at the same time prevent new waves of refugees.

Israel, on the other hand, does not trust the new government in Damascus and attributes to it a dangerous Islamist ideology. From this point of view, a decentralized Syria with weak leadership is easier to control.

These contradictions are no exception. They point to a fundamental difference in how both countries understand security and order in the region — and their own role in this system.

From Ankara's point of view, Israel justifies almost any expansion of its military area of operations for security reasons, even if it comes at the expense of the territorial integrity of other states. For example, Israel has created buffer zones in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

In mid-March, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in an interview with Anadolu agency, said: after the Iranian conflict, Israel "cannot live without an enemy." The next, according to the Turkish interpretation, will be Ankara. Israel, the Turkish side claims, is now trying to "declare Turkey a new enemy."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the same thing back in 2024: according to him, having defeated Hamas, Israel "will not limit itself to Gaza," but sooner or later will take aim at Turkey.

This narrative resonates in Turkish society. Polls have been recording extremely negative attitudes towards Israel for years. According to a Pew Research Center survey from June last year, 93% of respondents in Turkey spoke negatively about the Jewish state. More than a third of Turks consider Israel to be the main threat to their country.

This distrust is mutual. For example, The Jerusalem Post recently cited an assessment by Yoni Ben Menachem, an analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Policy and Security Issues: "Turkey is the new Iran."

Behind this is the idea that Ankara, if Tehran weakens, may try to take a leading position in the region itself. With the decline of the "Shiite axis," according to Menachem, there will be a power vacuum that Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan will try to fill, forming a "Sunni bloc of power."

This is not about a temporary disagreement between Turkey and Israel. A long dispute between two regional powers is forming before our eyes, which increasingly perceive each other as strategic rivals. The more persistently both sides try to push their own interests, the higher the risk that a new form of direct confrontation will eventually grow out of competition.