Turkey – Israel tensions: War is not the only ugly scenario

TURKEY - In Brief 02 Aug 2024 by Atilla Yesilada

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Roughly a week after in one of his endless stream of public speeches Erdogan had insinuated Turkey could declare war on Israel, the latter assassinated two HAMAS leaders, namely Ismael Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif, leading to howls of outrage from all political parties in Turkey. The hits on HAMAS leadership also ensured that the hostilities in the region will last for months to come, and raised the prospect of an all-out war to unprecedented highs. Under very heavy pressure from his smaller but rapidly growing Islamist rival New Welfare Party (NWP), Erdogan is essentially forced to ratchet up the rhetoric in this scenario. I don’t expect a free-for-all brawl in the Middle East, but if it were to happen Turkey would sustain even more damage. This Market Brief is a laundry list of what else might happen in the Turkey-Israeli rivalry. At this juncture, I don’t assign probabilities to bad-case scenarios, hoping that I shall never be forced by the expansion of war in Middle East to revisit my laundry list. Politically speaking, lone-wolf or ISIS Khorasan attacks on Jewish institutions and targets at large remain a serious concern for me, because it had happened in the past. Also, an ISIS suspect raided a church earlier this year, killing an innocent bystander, suggesting that while vastly improved, the capacity of Turkish intelligence is not sufficient to prevent all such plots. Israel may decide to hit some of the remaining HAMAS operatives in Turkey, though the heavyweights have left soon after 7 October, and Israel would be wise enough to know that such an act would amount to a declaration of war. While I haven’t read the text of Montreux Treaty (regulating the passage of ...