A recent media frenzy about open threats from Ankara may have been just that but the slide toward actual conflict is there

The latest wave of discussion about a possible Turkish-Israeli confrontation was triggered by media reports claiming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade Israel.

Soon afterward, however, that interpretation was challenged in Türkiye. Thespecific quoteturned out to be old and taken out of context, and Turkish voices insisted that Erdogan had made no direct statement about being prepared to launch a war against Israel. Still, he has undeniably been escalating his harsh rhetoric towards Israel, including calling it a terrorist state and comparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler.

Yet even setting aside the dispute over the precise wording, the intensity of the reaction to the 'invasion threat' reports is revealing in itself. It shows that relations between Ankara and West Jerusalem have already reached a stage at which even an ambiguous phrase is instantly treated as a political signal, and any sharp comment can become part of the wider picture of a major regional confrontation. The ground for such a perception has long been prepared by the very trajectory of Turkish-Israeli relations.

A slide towards conflict

At first glance, this may appear to be no more than another burst of emotional rhetoric of the kind that has long been common in the Middle East, where dramatic threats and demonstrative statements have become part of the political language. But that explanation is too shallow and therefore misses the real point. What we are witnessing in fact reflects a much deeper and more dangerous process. Türkiye and Israel are gradually ceasing to see one another merely as occasional opponents divided by particular disputes, and are increasingly beginning to view each other as strategic rivals in a long game. That is what makes the current exchange of statements especially alarming. Once states enter a phase of systemic rivalry, rhetoric itself starts shaping how elites, societies, and security institutions imagine a future conflict as something almost natural.

In one sense, there is nothing surprising about this. The Middle East is structured in such a way that several ambitious centers of power can rarely coexist without an escalating competition between them. When multiple states claim exceptional status, the role of regional guarantor, or the right to speak for the region or at least for a large part of it, their interests will sooner or later collide. Türkiye and Israel are now moving ever more clearly toward precisely that point. Both states lay claim to a special mission. Both want to be indispensable to outside powers. Both believe that yielding to a rival today may become a historic defeat tomorrow. And both build their strategies not only around the defense of national interests but also around the idea of regional primacy. In such a context, even temporary tactical cooperation does not alter the deeper reality. Competition over space, influence, routes, alliances, and symbolic leadership continues to accumulate at a systemic level.

A history of partnership

It is particularly important to understand that Türkiye and Israel were by no means destined for hostility. On the contrary, for decades their relations developed along a very different trajectory. Ankara became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel in the middle of the twentieth century. During the Cold War, the two maintained working ties grounded in pragmatism, shared links to the Western world, and an understanding that in an unstable regional environment it was better to have additional channels of interaction than to turn ideological differences into a permanent source of conflict. But the true flourishing of Turkish-Israeli cooperation came in the 1990s. That was when both sides began to see in the other an important element of their own security strategy.

In those years, Turkish-Israeli relations did indeed approach a near-strategic level. Military and intelligence cooperation was particularly close. For Türkiye, this meant access to technology, modernization, coordination on security matters, and the strengthening of its armed forces. For Israel, an alliance with a large Muslim country occupying a position of immense geographic importance carried both symbolic and practical value. It demonstrated that the Jewish state was capable of building durable ties in the region and moving beyond the usual boundaries of diplomatic isolation. Joint exercises, military contacts, defense agreements, technical modernization, intelligence exchanges, and political coordination all created the impression that a long-term axis was taking shape between the two states.

It is to that period that the story of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan belongs, a story that still carries symbolic weight for understanding how Turkish-Israeli closeness was perceived both in Türkiye and across the region. What remains a confirmed fact is that Ocalan was captured by Turkish intelligence in Kenya in 1999. Yet almost immediately, a broader narrative took hold suggesting that Israeli intelligence may have assisted Türkiye in the operation. That theme became part of the half-shadowed political memory of the region. For some, it was evidence of the depth of the Turkish-Israeli partnership. For others, it became part of a wider myth that Israel, at critical moments, stood with the Turkish state in its struggle against the Kurdish movement. Even if one leaves aside the question of how accurate those perceptions were, the more important point remains. Such narratives could only take root because, in the 1990s, Turkish-Israeli cooperation appeared so close that many found it entirely plausible that Israel might have had a hand in some of Türkiye's most sensitive operations.

And this is where one of the most striking ironies of modern Middle Eastern history lies. What once seemed like a durable strategic partnership gradually turned into a field of irritation, mutual suspicion, and then near-open rivalry. Erdogan's rise to power did not produce an immediate rupture, but it steadily altered the ideological framework of the relationship. The new Turkish leadership viewed the region differently. It sought not merely to preserve ties to the Western security architecture, but to construct its own autonomous axis of influence, drawing upon the Islamic factor, a more active policy across former Ottoman spaces, and the projection of moral leadership on issues tied to the Muslim world. Within that model, Israel could no longer remain for Ankara simply a pragmatic partner. It increasingly became a convenient point of ideological contrast and at the same time an important target of foreign policy pressure.

Much more than just Palestine

The turning point in public perception came with the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, when Israeli forces raided a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza, which Türkiye had helped to organize. During the attack, nine people were killed aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, most of them Turkish nationals. After that, relations deteriorated sharply, and mutual distrust moved far beyond the walls of diplomatic offices. It became part of mass political consciousness. For Turkish society, Israel increasingly appeared as a state acting from a position of force and disregarding moral restraints. For much of the Israeli establishment, Türkiye came to look like a former ally moving rapidly toward radicalization, using the Palestinian issue for its own rise, and shifting toward a more confrontational model of behavior. Later, both sides made efforts to normalize relations. There were apologies, negotiations, a return to formal diplomatic channels, and eventually the restoration of full relations. But that warming proved to be more of a pause than a lasting reversal. The war in Gaza shattered the relationship once again, and it became obvious that the old level of trust no longer existed.

The current tension cannot be reduced to the Palestinian issue alone, even though that remains the most powerful emotional accelerator of the conflict. In reality, Türkiye and Israel now diverge along several strategic lines at once. The first is linked to Syria. For Türkiye, the Syrian arena is directly connected to questions of national security, the Kurdish issue, refugees, border control, and its own capacity for projecting force. For Israel, Syria forms part of a much broader equation involving Iran, Hezbollah, weapons routes, and the danger of hostile military infrastructure taking shape near its borders. For the moment these interests overlap only in part, but the sheer density of the two states' presence in the same theater is gradually increasing the risk not only of political friction but of operational military clashes as well.

The second line runs through the Eastern Mediterranean. Here the question is not only about energy and maritime boundaries, but about the very architecture of the region's future order. Türkiye sees itself as a natural center of power in this space and reacts sharply to any configuration in which it is isolated or pushed aside. Israel, meanwhile, seeks to deepen ties with coalitions capable of constraining Turkish ambitions while at the same time expanding its own strategic room for maneuver. The more actively each side searches for an external support system, the more the other interprets that effort as a project of encirclement and exclusion.

The third line concerns the struggle for symbolic leadership. This is an especially important factor, although it is often underestimated. Israel proceeds from the assumption that it must preserve military and technological superiority, as well as political initiative in questions concerning regional security. Under Erdogan, Türkiye has become ever more insistent in claiming the role of a state that speaks for a broad Muslim audience, especially where Palestinians, Jerusalem, and resistance to Israeli policy are concerned. For Erdogan, this is part of a long-term project in which Türkiye is meant to appear not as a peripheral member of the Western world, but as an autonomous center of power combining military capability, historical memory, and civilizational ambition. From that perspective, confrontation with Israel brings Ankara not only risks but political dividends.

Yet for Israel as well, the current escalation is not devoid of internal logic. In a climate of chronic crisis, military tension, and deep social fractures, the image of an external enemy once again becomes an instrument of consolidation. For a government accustomed to thinking like a besieged fortress, an outside threat is a useful tool of political survival. After the conflict in Gaza, after tensions on the northern front, and against the background of constant confrontation with Iran, Türkiye may begin to be seen by part of the Israeli establishment as the next major systemic challenge. And it's a challenge unlike any Israel has faced before: not an ideological enemy on the margins and not an ostracized rogue state, but a strong regional power with ambitions, an army, industry, demography, and a desire to reshape the regional balance in its own favor.

In that sense, the danger of Turkish-Israeli confrontation does not lie in the idea that the two countries stand today on the threshold of immediate war. What matters far more is that they are increasingly placing one another on their long-term maps of threat perception. Once that happens, political rhetoric begins to perform a preparatory function, accustoming society to the idea that a future clash is inevitable. It generates expert justifications for greater harshness. It legitimizes force buildups, new alliances, more aggressive moves in adjacent arenas, and a lower threshold of sensitivity to risk. At such moments, conflict may remain below the threshold of open war for a long time, but the underlying developments already start working in favor of its arrival.

The Kurdish question plays a particularly important role in this structure. For Türkiye, it carries an almost existential meaning. Any external contact with forces that Ankara associates with the PKK or regards as ideologically close to it is perceived not as a potential threat to the territorial and political stability of the state. That is why even rumors or suspicions of possible Israeli interest in the Kurdish factor are capable of provoking an intensely painful reaction in Türkiye. It is here that one can see especially clearly how historical memory, intelligence suspicions, regional competition, and symbolic politics are woven into a single dangerous knot. In such an atmosphere, even indirect actions may be interpreted as hostile signals.

One must also remember that the present escalation is being fueled by the internal needs of both sides. Türkiye is living through economic fatigue, inflationary pressure, social unease, and growing polarization. Israel, too, is undergoing deep internal strain, where questions of security, war, and political responsibility have merged into one crisis-ridden whole. For both countries, external confrontation can become a means of redistributing attention, tightening social discipline, and justifying harsher decisions. This does not mean that their leaders are consciously seeking a major war. But it does mean that they may be less inclined toward de-escalation if tension helps them resolve domestic political problems of their own.

Permanent state of near-war

The greatest danger lies in the fact that conflicts of this kind rarely begin as an openly declared major war. Far more often they grow out of a chain of mutual suspicions, peripheral crises, failed signals, shows of force, and miscalculations. First the sides simply become accustomed to thinking of one another as future enemies. Then they begin to act on the basis of that assumption. After that, any local flare-up in Syria, in the Eastern Mediterranean, around the Kurdish issue, around the Palestinian question, or in the struggle over new regional coalitions can become a trigger. That is why the most accurate way to describe what is happening is neither as an inevitable war nor as an empty bluff, but as an accelerating strategic movement toward conflict.

Türkiye and Israel have not yet crossed the line into direct military confrontation. More than that, there is still room between them for restraint, tactical calculation, and an awareness of the price both sides would pay in the event of open war. But the problem is that the strategic environment around them is becoming increasingly broken, while mechanisms of trust continue to erode. In such conditions, even the absence of a direct intention to fight is no guarantee that war will not emerge from the logic of events itself.

If no new system of restraints emerges, if not even minimal formats for crisis management appear, if outside powers continue to use Turkish-Israeli contradictions in their own games, and if domestic political regimes continue to feed on external confrontation, then today's verbal clashes may well prove to be the prologue to a far harsher and more dangerous phase of Middle Eastern politics. And then the argument over what exactly Erdogan said and how exactly the Israeli press retold it will remain only a minor detail against the background of a far more consequential process. A process in which two powerful states are gradually training themselves to look at one another not as difficult neighbors, but as future major adversaries.

(RT.com)