Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide on June 28 was presented by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar as a long-overdue act of moral and historical justice. However, this wording conceals what the very timing of the decision reveals, writes Eldad Ben-Aharon, a senior research fellow at the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute (PRIF).

The recognition came against the backdrop of a growing number of Israeli politicians and members of the national security community increasingly referring to Turkey as the “new Iran,” although some dispute such a characterization.

The official recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide also serves as a strategic countermeasure in response to Ankara’s intensified legal and diplomatic campaign since 2024 aimed at portraying Israel as a violator of international law. This campaign contributed to the deterioration of Israel’s international standing after the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s 2025 “trial balloon”: testing the reaction to recognition of the Armenian Genocide

On August 26, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took part in the PBD Podcast. Asked why Israel does not recognize the Armenian Genocide, he first claimed that the Knesset had already passed the relevant bill. This was only partly true — Netanyahu himself and his allies had repeatedly blocked such bills in the past.

When the host asked for his personal position, Netanyahu replied: “I just did. There you go.” This remark made headlines in the global press. But nothing followed: no institutional statements, no policy changes. Armenia called the move populist.

A statement made offhand in a podcast does not constitute official recognition. At best, it was a “trial balloon” ahead of what came next.

On June 28, 2026, Israel’s Cabinet unanimously voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The decision to officially name both the perpetrator and the victim sparked celebratory headlines in the press. Unlike Netanyahu’s podcast remark, this was a real change in state policy.

But the move also served other important functions.

Although Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar characterized the recognition as a moral act, saying that “it is never too late to do the right thing,” it also pursued a strategic aim. A fuller reading of the decision shows the instrumentalization of the memory of the Armenian Genocide as a countermeasure against Turkey amid the rapid deterioration of relations between Tel Aviv and Ankara.

However, recognition of the Armenian Genocide was a diplomatic card that could only be played once. Although the decision still awaits formal approval by the Knesset (the vote was postponed until after the October 2026 elections), the Cabinet’s unanimous verdict has already led to a further political and diplomatic rupture with Turkey.

The context of Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Since 2023, Turkey has been building an increasingly tough legal and diplomatic strategy aimed at entrenching in international forums a narrative of Israel’s guilt. In August 2024, Turkey filed a declaration of intervention at the International Court of Justice, joining the case initiated by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention.

From this perspective, Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide is not merely a belated act of justice. It is a strategic move timed to coincide with the period of escalating confrontation with Ankara.

The recognition was also the outcome of a much longer internal process in Israeli politics and civil society that began two decades before the current confrontation with Turkey. Advocacy for recognition in Israel dates back at least to the early 2000s, when religious and political figures from across the spectrum began raising the issue on their own initiative — long before it became linked to the deterioration of Israeli-Turkish relations.

Knesset members from a wide range of parties, including Yossi Sarid and Haim Oron, as well as Reuven Rivlin and Aryeh Eldad, promoted the issue for years through parliamentary channels. This was followed by recognition at the municipal level — first in Petah Tikva, and in 2023 in Haifa as well. This “bottom-up” trajectory, driven by rank-and-file Knesset members and local councils rather than the executive branch, represents a separate process worthy of independent analysis.

What follows is a narrower but no less important angle: an explanation of why the government decided to act precisely in June 2026 and why the timing was chosen in line with Turkey’s legal and diplomatic campaign against Israel, rather than with the long-term domestic trend toward recognition of the genocide.

From diplomatic rupture to legal confrontation

The most common explanation for why Israel long avoided recognizing the Armenian Genocide points to Turkey. This is a compelling historical argument: from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, especially after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which isolated Israel in the Middle East and made it more dependent on Turkey, Israel’s strategic partnership with Ankara made recognition extremely costly from a diplomatic standpoint.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry kept the issue quiet in order to preserve those relations.

According to this interpretation, it was Erdogan who removed this obstacle: his growing hostility toward Israel, his rapprochement with Hamas, and the collapse of Israeli-Turkish relations after October 7, 2023 made recognition possible for the first time.

This explanation is correct. But it is incomplete.

It cannot explain what the very form of the decision says about the legal and strategic climate in which it was adopted. Previous Israeli-Turkish crises included the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. However, despite its seriousness, such events were ultimately resolved through diplomatic bargaining and, eventually, official apologies.

The rupture after 2023 is of a different nature. It is accompanied by Turkey’s sustained efforts to institutionalize, rather than merely declare, a narrative of Israel’s guilt.

Recognition in the context of the “New Iran” concept

The vote to recognize the Armenian Genocide also coincided with a broader shift in the rhetoric of senior Israeli figures toward Turkey: it began to be seen not simply as a difficult but manageable neighbor, but as the next key regional threat to the country, occupying the place long held by Iran. The government-appointed “Nagel Committee” warned that Israel should prepare for the possibility of a future military clash with Turkey, arguing that Ankara’s growing regional ambitions had fundamentally altered the strategic character of relations between the two states.

Continuing this line, on February 17, 2026, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (2021–2022) said at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem that “Turkey is the new Iran.” He argued that Erdogan is sophisticated and dangerous and seeks to encircle Israel, accused Ankara and Qatar of expanding their influence in Syria and other regions, and warned of Turkish efforts to turn Saudi Arabia against Israel and create a hostile Sunni bloc allied with nuclear-armed Pakistan. He also criticized what he called “Israeli diplomatic passivity” — wording that clearly calls for exactly such decisive steps as recognition of the genocide.

Taken together, these statements show that long before June 28, the Israeli foreign policy establishment had been shaping a position according to which Turkey is the structural successor to Iran’s former role as the chief regional antagonist. This Israeli conviction serves as the missing link between the genocide vote and the country’s broader security concept.

If Turkey is framed as an existential threat, then tools previously considered too risky to use against a NATO ally — including recognition of the 1915 genocide — become available. If the diplomatic value of the former relationship has already been written off, then recognition ceases to be a departure from Israel’s policy toward Turkey. On the contrary, it becomes just one part of it — alongside trilateral alliances with Greece and Cyprus and talk of a “hexagon” of anti-Turkish partnerships.

This concept remains disputed within Israel’s own national security and foreign policy community. Critics point out that the comparison to a “new Iran” serves a clear domestic political purpose: Naftali Bennett made these statements while preparing for a political comeback ahead of the country’s October 2026 elections.

Critics of this approach also argue that it overlooks an important distinction.

Unlike Iran, Turkey has never denied Israel’s right to exist and has not threatened it with direct military annihilation, although it has described Israel as “a burden for the whole world.” Such rhetoric drew criticism from a number of governments. In particular, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul condemned recent remarks by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan about Israel after speaking with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

However, this skepticism does not negate the trend described above. Bennett’s speech and the warnings of the “Nagel Committee” show that the concept of the “new Iran” had been actively constructed within the Israeli political community and security structures several months before the recognition vote. Nevertheless, this remains a matter of debate rather than a proven fact regarding Turkey’s intentions.

This distinction is fundamentally important: this article analyzes the political motives behind the recognition decision, but does not draw final conclusions about whether Turkey is the next existential threat to Israel.

Now that the recognition card has been played, the path toward normalization of relations between Israel and Turkey looks murkier than ever. Relations have entered a phase of open rivalry increasingly shaped by competing legal and normative frameworks of genocide denial and recognition, where historical memory serves as an instrument of both geopolitical competition and domestic politics.

For Germany, the EU, and other external actors, the lesson goes beyond this one specific case. As the rivalry between Israel and Turkey intensifies, historical memory is turning from a fixed fact into a living instrument of statecraft; it is used less to establish truth than to discipline an opponent. Both recognition and denial can serve this function.

Governments observing this rivalry and hoping to preserve cooperation with both countries on security, migration, and energy will have to take into account this dual nature of the use of history, rather than merely asking whose version of the past is more accurate.