Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under pressure over his delicate balancing act over Israel, with an increasingly popular and vocal opponent calling for a shutdown of the NATO defense system allegedly used to support the Jewish state.
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(Bloomberg) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under pressure over his delicate balancing act over Israel, with an increasingly popular and vocal opponent calling for a defense system to be shut down of NATO allegedly used to support the Jewish state.
Islamist politician Fatih Erbakan this week added his voice to those calling for the closure of the Kurecik radar facility. Erdogan has denied that Israel has access to intelligence from the facility in southern Turkey, which can detect missile launches from the region, including from Iran, in order to alert European defense systems.
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“Kurecik is a NATO base and the intelligence shared with the United States and the United Kingdom is directly used to protect Israel,” said Erbakan, 44, who rose to prominence after abandoning his alliance with Erdogan’s AKP and recorded the third best result in the local elections in March. elections. “This base must be closed,” he said in an interview in Ankara.
The call from Erbakan, the son of Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Erdogan’s late mentor Necmettin Erbakan, is the latest challenge to the president as he struggles to balance Turkey’s membership to the Western NATO alliance with its religious base’s opposition to Israel.
Read more: Islamist advances are a new headache for Erdogan after his electoral defeat
Erbakan’s role in Turkish politics is far greater than the size of his party: his recent rise demonstrates the appeal of a grassroots – and anti-Israeli – Islamist movement that could derail Erdogan’s goal of extending his already record reign by two decades.
Erdogan has previously said he would be willing to close Kurecik due to a dispute with the United States over the acquisition of Russian air defense, but he is very unlikely to do so now. Such a move would seriously strain ties with US-led NATO allies who support Israel.
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Read more: Turkey confirms halt to all trade with Israel due to Gaza war
Meanwhile, Turkey confirmed Thursday that it would cease all trade with Israel until that country allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, after two officials familiar with the matter said the pause had come into force earlier today.
The president rejected claims that the Israeli military could have access to information obtained by the radar facility, which Iran has threatened to target in the event of war with the Jewish state. It is unclear whether the facility played a role in Israel’s largely successful defense against about 300 drones and missiles launched last month from the Islamist republic.
“The Kurecik radar center does not and cannot have any relationship, connection or contact with any state other than the security of our country and our alliance,” Erdogan said on April 26, adding that Islam does not tolerate not “spreading lies”.
Fluctuating relationships
Before Israel invaded Gaza in October, in response to Hamas’ deadly attack on southern communities on October 7, Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were exploring ways to increase cooperation in energy and commercial after more than a decade of tensions. This has been thwarted by the ongoing conflict, which has sparked a popular backlash across the Arab world and even in the United States.
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Erdogan called Hamas militants « freedom fighters » before the election and repeatedly criticized Israel’s conduct in the war, which health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say has killed 34,000 Palestinians. Unlike the United States and the European Union, Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Erdogan received the political leader of Hamas in Istanbul on April 20 to discuss the need for a permanent ceasefire and accelerated humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Yet Erbakan’s Islamist New Socialist Party, which supported Erdogan’s re-election as president a year ago, was able to speak out about the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza in stricter terms than Erdogan did during the local electoral campaign.
Price accounted for more than 6 percent of the vote, contributing to landslide victories by the pro-secular opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, in Istanbul and other major cities, alongside unprecedented incursions into the former strongholds of the AKP party.
Read more: How Israel and Iran are on the verge of a full-fledged war: QuickTake
Turkey’s decision to suspend all trade with Israel after earlier restrictions on exports prompted a swift response from Netanyahu’s government.
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“This is the behavior of a dictator who flouts the interests of the Turkish people and the business community, while ignoring international trade agreements,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Thursday in a message published on the social media platform
The Israeli government will work to create immediate alternatives to trade with Turkey by increasing local production and finding other suppliers, he said.
Turkey agreed to host the radar facility at Kurecik, located about 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of the Iranian border, as part of the United Nations Treaty Organization’s missile defense architecture. North Atlantic in 2011. The system is capable of detecting the launch of ballistic missiles. missiles in the region.
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