Turkey’s relations with Israel, rocky at the best of times, continued to take a nosedive as Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, called on NATO to expel Turkey. The call came following threats from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of intervening militarily against Israel in defense of Gaza. Turkey had violated NATO’s core principles, Katz asserted in a Monday statement, by threatening to invade a Western democratic country unprovoked. “The United States and the Western world must denounce Erdogan and halt his destructive activities,” Katz said.
In comments on Sunday, Erdogan said “there is no reason” that Turkey could not act, as it had done previously, in support of its allies in other countries such as Libya and Azerbaijan. “Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we can do the same to them,” Erdogan said, referring to Turkish military support for Azerbaijan against Armenia in 2020 and for Libya’s Government of National Accord the same year.
Katz responded swiftly via the social media platform X. Erdogan was “following in the footsteps” of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with his threats against Israel, he said. “Just let him remember what happened there and how it ended,” Katz wrote, alluding to Saddam’s capture by US forces in a hole he was hiding in close to a farmhouse in his native Tikrit. He was executed thereafter.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry kept up the war of words, comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yet again, to Adolf Hitler and saying he would meet a similar fate.
