Israel-Hamas War Boosts Profile of Erdogan Opponent in Turkey ...

15 days ago

BNN

(Bloomberg) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming under pressure over his tricky balancing act regarding Israel, with an increasingly popular and vocal opponent calling for the closing of a NATO defense system allegedly used to support the Jewish State.

Islamist politician Fatih Erbakan this week added his voice to those demanding the shutdown of the Kurecik radar installation. Erdogan has denied that Israel has access to intelligence from the southern Turkey facility, which can detect the firing of missiles from the region, including from Iran, in order to alert European defense systems.

“Kurecik is a NATO base and intelligence shared with the US and the UK is directly used to protect Israel,” said Erbakan, 44, who shot to prominence after abandoning an alliance with Erdogan’s AK Party to record the third-best result in March local elections. “This base must be closed,” he said in an interview in Ankara.

The call by Erbakan, the son of Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, the late Erdogan mentor Necmettin Erbakan, is the latest challenge for the president as he strives to balance Turkey’s membership of the NATO Western alliance with opposition to Israel from his religious base.

Read More: Islamist Gains Are Fresh Headache for Erdogan After Vote Defeat

Erbakan’s role in Turkish politics is much greater than the size of his party: His recent rise demonstrates the appeal of a popular Islamist — and anti-Israel — movement that could derail Erdogan’s goal to extend his already record two-decade rule.

Erdogan has previously said he’d be prepared to shut down Kurecik amid a dispute with the US over the acquisition of Russian air defenses, but he is very unlikely to do so now. Such a move would severely strain ties with US-led NATO allies that support Israel.

Read More: Turkey Confirms All Trade Halt With Israel Over War in Gaza

At the same time, Turkey on Thursday confirmed that it would halt all trade with Israel until that country allows uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, after two officials familiar with the matter said the pause went into effect earlier in the day.

The president dismissed allegations that the Israeli military might have access to information obtained by the radar installation, which Iran has threatened to target in the event of a war with the Jewish state. It’s not known whether the facility played a part in Israel’s largely successful defense of about 300 drones and missiles launched last month from the Islamist Republic.

“The radar center in Kurecik does not and can’t have any relationship, bond or contact with any state other than the security of our country and our alliance,” Erdogan said April 26, adding that Islam does not tolerate “disseminating lies.”

Fluctuating Relations

Before Israel invaded Gaza in October, a response to the deadly assault by Hamas into southern communities on Oct. 7, Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were exploring ways to increase cooperation in energy and trade after more than a decade of tensions. That was derailed by the ongoing conflict, which has triggered a popular backlash across the Arab world and even in the US.

Erdogan called Hamas militants “freedom fighters” before the elections and repeatedly criticized Israel’s conduct in the war, which health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say has killed 34,000 Palestinians. Unlike the US and the European Union, Turkey doesn’t consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Erdogan hosted Hamas’s political leader in Istanbul on April 20 to discuss the need for a permanent cease-fire and accelerated humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Yet Erbakan’s Islamist New Welfare Party, which backed Erdogan’s reelection as president a year ago, was able to speak out over the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza in more stringent terms than Erdogan on the local-election campaign trail.

The prize was more than 6% of the vote, which contributed to crushing wins for the pro-secular opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, in Istanbul and other major cities, alongside unprecedented inroads into former AK Party strongholds.

Read More: How Israel and Iran Came to Brink of Full-Fledged War: QuickTake

Turkey decision to halt all trade with Israel after earlier restricting exports drew a swift response from Netanyahu’s government.

“This is the behavior of a dictator who tramples the interests of the Turkish people and business community, while ignoring international trade agreements,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Thursday in a post on the social media platform X.

The Israeli government will work to create immediate alternatives for trade with Turkey by increasing local manufacturing and finding other suppliers, he said.

Turkey agreed to host the radar installation in Kurecik, which lies some 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of the Iranian border, as part of the missile defense architecture of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2011. The system is capable of detecting launch of ballistic missiles in the region.