Ties with Israel Sour as Erdogan Seizes Gaza Issue Before Election

ISTANBUL — The deaths of at least 60 people in Gaza this week have not only inflamed relations between Turkey and Israel. They have added a powerful new element to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election campaign, as he seizes the issue to further a long-standing ambition to position himself as a leader among Muslim states.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may no longer be high on the agenda of world affairs, but it has taken over the campaign before voting on June 24, when Erdogan hopes to be re-elected to a more powerful presidency.

On Friday, Erdogan called a large political rally in support of Palestinians and gathered leaders of the 57-member Organization for Islamic Conference in Istanbul for a summit meeting to protest the deaths Monday, the same day President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a step many had hoped would come with a peace settlement.

“As Muslims we do not and cannot do anything other than denounce,” Erdogan told the crowd of thousands waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and guests who included the Palestinian prime minister. But he warned, “One day the mistakes of this administration will rebound on America.”

Since the deaths in Gaza, Turkey’s diplomatic feud with Israel has deepened daily. Both countries have recalled ambassadors and consuls in an escalating tit-for-tat, and ministers have joined the fray with saber rattling in interviews with the news media.

Turkey’s newspapers, most of which are pro-government, have been filled with the issue, headlining Erdogan’s stern stance against Israel and championing the Palestinian cause.

Throughout the week Erdogan issued a flurry of statements to Turkey’s obedient media outlets, accusing Israel of genocide — “What Israel is doing is genocide” — and railing at the powerlessness of the United Nations to take any stand against Israel.

“Here is the United Nations, finished, drained out, collapsed in the face of all those incidents,” he told fallen soldiers’ families invited to break the Ramadan fast in the presidential palace in Ankara. “If Israel’s bullying is met with more silence, the world will rapidly be dragged into a chaos where thuggery prevails.”

He added that Ankara was pressing members of the U.N. Security Council to be more active, but that he had not been able to reach the U.N. secretary-general. He said the Turkish chief of staff and Foreign Ministry were working to evacuate the injured from Gaza.

Turkey and Israel broke off diplomatic relations in 2010, when Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla sent by a Turkish charity to try to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, killing nine passengers in international waters. Relations were restored in the past two years, and trade and tourism recovered somewhat.

But Turkey was the first country to recall its ambassadors from the United States and Israel for consultations after the Gaza protests. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry then suggested to the Israeli ambassador that he return home for a while.

Israel reacted by recalling its ambassador and asking the Turkish consul to leave. Turkey responded by asking the Israeli consul to leave.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, called this week for Israel to be brought before the International Criminal Court for the shootings in an interview with the state broadcaster TRT Haber.

“We are analyzing what kind of legal steps can be taken,” he said. “Israel should account for its actions.”

Israel’s tourism minister countered that with a warning to Israeli tourists not to visit Turkey. “I advise not to visit Turkey, and I would have said the same even before recent events,” the minister, Yariv Levin, told the Ynet news website in remarks published Thursday. “As long as Turkey treats us like it did, there is no reason to fly there.”

Ibrahim Kalin, a scholar of Islamic philosophy and an adviser to Erdogan, recalled the Nakba, or Catastrophe, as Arabs call the Palestinian exodus in the 1948 war that is commemorated on May 15.

“Your occupation is a temporary one,” he wrote on Twitter, quoting a letter from Saladin to Richard the Lionheart. “As long as we have the power to fight, you will not be comfortable here.”

Yet a toothless statement issued by the Organization of Islamic Conference may prove the limit of Erdogan’s achievements.

In December when the United States first announced its decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, Erdogan called a similar gathering of the group’s members to Istanbul.

The group made the strongest response to Trump’s decision at the time and issued a statement recognizing East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, but failed to deflect the U.S. president’s plan to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Critics of Erdogan pointed out that the recently thickening economic ties between the countries, including $2.5 billion in Turkish exports to Israel, according to Turkish news reports, made Erdogan’s chest-thumping a bit hollow.

For all the rhetoric, he has not been able to change the situation for the Palestinians, and perhaps he does not intend to.

When an opposition party proposed tabling a motion to cancel all security, economic and political agreements with Israel this week, Erdogan’s party, with holds a majority of seats, did not even allow a discussion on the issue.

The leading opposition candidate, Muharrem Ince of the Republican People’s Party, joined in voicing support for the Palestinians but mocked Erdogan’s stern rhetoric against Israel as hollow.

“You cannot cut trade ties with Israel, you are only talking about it,” he called out to an imaginary Erdogan at a campaign rally in Amasya in central Turkey. “The only thing he can do is hold a rally and let me tell you this is the only thing he can do, because he does not care about the Muslims in Palestine, he only cares about the upcoming election.”

“If you really challenge Israel, I will stand by your side,” he added.