Over the past eight days of hostilities, Turkey has stepped up its anti-Israel rhetoric. Rhetoric against Israel and Jews has reached such heights that the United States has condemned the Turkish president for anti-Semitic comments. While the US is working to end the Hamas war against Israel, Turkey is fanning the flames, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"Among the recent statements include a demand by Turkey to separate Jerusalem from Israel. Since 2020 when Turkey turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, the Turkish religious and political leadership of the AKP Party, which supports Hamas, has sought to “liberate” Al-Aqsa and claims it will take over Jerusalem. The latest comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were to demand a “separate arrangement” for Jerusalem.

Turkey then condemned Austria for supporting Israel and flying the Israeli flag. Erdogan claimed that Austria was “trying to make Muslims pay for the Jews they subjected to genocide.” In short, the argument was that Austria was somehow punishing Muslims for the Holocaust. Ankara then called Israel a “terror state.” In the past, its president compared Israel to Nazi Germany in 2019. At the time, the pro-Turkey stance of the Trump administration and its State Department members, some of whom were pro-Turkey, didn’t condemn the comments. Today’s US administration is different and Ankara doesn’t get the green light to host Hamas and bash Israel as much as it used to.

Among the other comments of Turkey’s president was to call on the world to stop the “aggression on al-Quds,” a reference to Jerusalem. He argued that if the world did not stop Israel, then this “brutal mentality” would harm others tomorrow. The comments by the leadership of the AKP are also represented in far-right media in Turkey. Yena Safak, a newspaper that caters to the populist right in the country and is close to the regime, argued for Turkey to lead an Islamic alliance to attack Israel.

The alliance would include Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Malaysia and Pakistan, countries that either back Hamas or are close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Ankara had consulted with Tehran last week about how to confront Israel, and Turkey has called on the pope and others to encourage sanctions against the Jewish state. Compared to Turkey’s rhetoric against Israel, Iran’s rhetoric has been relatively muted.

Turkey has become one of the most anti-Israel states in the world and its constant anti-Israel rhetoric, fed through its state-controlled media that run the most outlandish articles about Israel, fuels antisemitism in Turkey and abroad. At many antisemitic rallies in Europe, Turkish flags can be seen," the authors noted.