DAN HART
Amid a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that jolted Istanbul Wednesday causing multiple injuries, experts are sounding the alarm over the shifting ground of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's continued consolidation of power, support of Islamist terror groups, and the threat his regime poses to Israel, the Middle East, and the free world at large.
In a signal of the Islamist regime's ongoing ties with Islamist terrorist groups, Turkey's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin held talks with Hamas leaders over the weekend to discuss the delivery of aid to Gaza amid Israel's continued war against the terror group there. According to The Times of Israel, Kalin "reassured them of Turkey's ongoing support and said Turkey would firmly oppose any new efforts to occupy or annex Palestinian territory."
Since Israel's war on Hamas began after the terror group's October 7 attack on the Jewish state, in which they killed 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages, Erdogan has repeatedly called Israel a "terrorist state," accused it of committing "genocide" in Gaza, and claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "worse than Hitler."
While the Trump administration appears to be primarily focused on dismantling Iran's nuclear program, experts say the greater threat to Israel and arguably the entire region is Erdogan's Islamist regime. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former CIA operative in Turkey, contended in The Atlantic over the weekend that Erdogan is "setting the stage for a clash with Israel" by "consolidateing power at home and preparing to project it abroad." He added that "Turkey has quickly emerged as perhaps the greatest danger to the Jewish state in the Middle East."
Gerecht went on to detail how "Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have cowed their liberal opponents, co-opted most of the Turkish press, purged and restaffed the Turkish military -- with special zeal after crushing a 2016 coup attempt -- and revamped Turkey's intelligence service." He further noted that in March, Erdogan "arrested and falsely charged as a terrorist the most potent political rival he has faced since becoming prime minister in 2003: the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu." After protests broke out in Turkey as a result, "the regime has tightened its grip and arrested hundreds of demonstrators."
Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, concurs.
"President Erdogan is already past the two-decade mark in his leadership of Turkey," he explained during "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" Tuesday. "When he came into office, people thought maybe he'd be a pragmatist, that he could combine Islamic democracy. Look, if you have to put an adjective before democracy, it's not a democracy. ... As he's consolidated power, his true ideology has come through. He's a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte through and through. And in that regard, he really wants nothing more than the defeat of the United States, the defeat of Europe, and the eradication of Israel."
Rubin further pointed out the extent of Erdogan's ambitions in the Middle East and the surrounding region. Some may say he wants to reestablish the Ottoman Empire because his own people, his own aides do. When you look at the maps in the Turkish Defense Ministry, for example, they include much of the former Ottoman Empire," including places like Greece, Cyprus, and other parts of the Balkans, as well as Syria, where Turkey is "trying to almost establish a colonial presence."
As for Israel, Rubin highlighted further cause for concern. "So many of the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, both before and after October 7th, 2023, were actually planned or financed from Istanbul, Turkey, from the former seat of the Ottoman Caliphate," he remarked. "That is something that has really raised the concern in counterterrorism circles, not only in the United States and in Israel, but throughout much of the Arab world as well."
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