Last month, at a meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “biggest obstacle to regional peace.” This is a false statement that reeks of hypocrisy.
Since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, Israel under Netanyahu’s leadership has made peace in the Middle East much more attainable. In fact, if Erdogan wants to talk about threats to peace in the region, he ought to look at himself in a mirror.
Before the October 7 massacre, the Islamic Republic of Iran – the main threat to peace and stability in the Middle East – was at the peak of its power, on the verge of complete hegemony over the region. It had a ring of proxies armed to the teeth with everything from long-range missiles to sophisticated drones. These proxies practically surrounded Israel and also posed a grave danger to Arab states of the Persian Gulf. In 2019, for example, the Houthis in Yemen attacked Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, temporarily cutting the kingdom’s oil output in half.
Israel's war against Iranian proxies
Fast forward to today, and everything has changed. Israel has laid waste to Iran’s proxies – Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to some degree the Houthis in Yemen. These proxies are now shells of their former selves. Israel assassinated most of their top leaders and destroyed most of their terrorist infrastructure. As a result, these Iranian proxies can no longer exert the kind of control and influence they once did.
Now, Lebanon is beginning to reclaim its sovereignty from Hezbollah, working to disarm the group entirely. Israel’s campaign in Gaza, though not yet complete, is eroding Hamas’s control over the coastal enclave. In Syria, Israel’s devastation of Hezbollah opened the window for rebel forces in the country to overthrow the brutal regime of president Bashar Al-Assad, who had been one of Iran’s most important allies.
Yet even after decimating Iran’s proxies, Netanyahu still wasn’t done. He took aim at Iran’s biggest threat – its nuclear weapons program. Israel quickly destroyed Iran’s defenses and hammered Iran’s nuclear facilities. Not surprisingly, the Israeli Air Force was able to control the skies over Iran in a matter of days.
Finally, Netanyahu managed to convince US President Donald Trump to put the finishing touch on Israel’s campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Thus, the president ordered the bombing of Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, as well as two other nuclear facilities, Isfahan and Natanz.
To make a long story short, Netanyahu’s efforts help put an end to Iran’s campaign to dominate the Middle East, and opened the door to expanding the Abraham Accords and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity for the region.
Turkey undermining peace in the Middle East
In contrast, Turkey, under Erdogan, has consistently undermined peace in the Middle East, projecting a destabilizing influence that stands in stark contrast to Israel’s efforts to neutralize regional threats.
It is no secret that Turkey, second only to Qatar, and even more conspicuously than Iran, provides political and logistical shelter to Hamas leaders. While supporting Hamas’s war against Israel, Ankara simultaneously denies recognition to its own Kurdish population, estimated to be over 25 million people.
The Turkish state’s refusal to acknowledge the Kurds is so extreme that the official Kurdish-language state broadcaster, TRT 6, is mandated to classify its programming as being in an “unknown language,” in accordance with Turkey’s longstanding policy of ethnic denial.
This refusal to recognize Kurdish identity is not limited to Turkey’s borders. When the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq held a referendum for independence in 2017, Erdogan responded with a thinly veiled threat: “Iraqi Kurds must give up on independence or go hungry,” threatening to close the border crossings that connect the region to the outer world.
Turkey’s hostility to Kurdish self-determination is even more aggressive in Syria. In northeast Syria, where the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES) has established a model of local governance, Turkey has waged a sustained campaign of military and political sabotage.
During the Syrian civil war, Ankara cultivated a mercenary force under the name of the Free Syrian Army to counter Kurdish gains, while simultaneously turning a blind eye, or worse, to the movement of fighters and weapons into the hands of ISIS. Erdogan famously predicted the fall of the Kurdish city of Kobani in “a matter of minutes,” a fall that never came, thanks to Kurdish resilience and international support.
Erdogan's expansionist ambitions are not confined to Kurdish affairs. In Libya, Turkey became a principal player in the country’s political fragmentation by backing one faction against the other, and then exploiting the resulting instability to claim vast swaths of the Eastern Mediterranean as part of a so-called Turkish Exclusive Economic Zone.
This claim included maritime areas belonging to Greece, Egypt, and the Republic of Cyprus – half of which remains under Turkish occupation. French intervention ultimately curtailed this maneuver, but the episode underscored Ankara’s aggressive posture at sea.
Turkey has also established military outposts in Somalia and Sudan, extending its strategic reach to the Red Sea – a region where it has no historical or legitimate geopolitical stake, beyond a desire to project neo-Ottoman influence.
Its global footprint of interventionism includes arms exports as well. Turkish-made drones were used by the Ethiopian government in the brutal crackdown on Tigray, where indiscriminate strikes led to widespread civilian casualties.
Even Erdogan’s brief flirtation with a peace process involving the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is widely viewed as tactical, designed not to resolve conflict, but to create conditions favorable for deeper Turkish involvement in northern Iraq and Syria. Ankara’s unambiguous ambitions in Mosul and Aleppo, paired with repeated allusions to restoring Ottoman-era borders, reveal a strategic doctrine rooted not in peace but in regional domination.
Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric – including his references to the “Zionist entity” – only reinforces his antagonistic role in the region. Turkish commentators make no effort to conceal their country’s intention to control Damascus, then lead an anti-Crusader offence of the Muslims against Israel.
Can a nation that suppresses minority rights, harbors terrorist leaders, and openly seeks territorial expansion credibly claim to stand for peace in the Middle East? Erdogan’s Turkey does not appear to be a mediator, but rather a power bent on reshaping the region in its own image.
Mem Husedin, based in Vancouver, is a writer on international politics, the Middle East, and Kurdistan. He is vice president of the Canadian Kurdistani Confederation and hosts the podcasts Rojeva Kurdistan and Kurd Talk. X@mhusedin
Jason Shvili, based in Toronto, is a freelance writer and commentator on Jewish affairs, Israel and the Middle East. X @JShvili