On the anniversary of the October 7 massacre, mass rallies were held across Turkey in support of Hamas, an organization designated as a terrorist group internationally.
These rallies glorified Hamas’s violent assaults on innocent Israeli civilians, resulting in the murder of thousands. During the onslaught, Hamas terrorists reportedly subjected Israeli women to unimaginable cruelty, acts of stripping, dragging, raping, and ultimately murdering them.
Various Turkish media outlets, alongside members of parliament, journalists, and academics, have openly expressed their support for this terrorist organization and its brutal acts on social-media accounts.
Additionally, Turkish participants in the so-called Sumud flotillas have spread misinformation and hostile rhetoric through state-affiliated news agencies and social-media platforms upon their deportation to Turkey, aiming to undermine the Jewish state and its people on a global stage.
Consistent patterns of extremism
The public support for Hamas’s genocidal actions in Turkey does not consist of isolated incidents. It reflects a broader, consistent pattern and set of ambitions endorsed by the Turkish regime, which has allied itself with Islamist extremist jihadists, treating them as assets to advance its geopolitical objectives. It recruits, trains, and deploys jihadist fighters across the region, spreading terrorism and instability.
Simultaneously, it crafts hostile narratives in the media and shapes Turkish public opinion to further its Islamist agendas. The Turkish actions not only undermine regional peace but also embolden terrorist groups and intensify sectarian and ethnic divisions throughout the Middle East.
Such behavior implies that the Turkish regime is substituting the Iranian role in utilizing both pan-Shia groups and radical Sunni jihadists such as Hamas, united by their shared animosity toward Israel.
These Turkish policies exacerbate regional conflicts, posing a significant threat to Israel and minority communities in Syria and beyond.
To counter Islamist terrorism sponsored by Turkey and to address the significant regional instability it causes, it is essential to establish clear boundaries for the Turkish regime through various measures.
Historically, the Turkish state has supported Islamist extremist groups to advance its interests against domestic dissidents and potential rivals. In the late 1980s, the Turkish state formed a Turkish branch of Hezbollah within its Kurdish region, aiming to target and eradicate Kurdish activists.
Trained and supported by the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism (JITEM), Hezbollah operated as a deadly force in Kurdish cities such as Diyarbakır, Batman, Bingol, and Mardin. Often acting under the directives of JITEM, members of Hezbollah employed brutal torture methods, inflicting severe pain and suffering on Kurdish victims.
Today, remnants of the former Hezbollah organization are reportedly reorganized under the legal guise of the Free Cause Party (HUDA-PAR). Four members of the party, including its leader, Zekeriya Yapıcıoglu, hold seats in the Turkish parliament as part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP alliance.
The HUDA-PAR has organized pro-Hamas rallies, featuring images of Hamas leaders and symbols linked to antisemitic violence. According to Kurdish activists in Diyarbakır and Batman, the Turkish state orchestrated the transportation of demonstrators from non-Kurdish regions in western Turkey to Kurdish-majority areas.
This action aimed to artificially inflate participation and promote the narrative of Kurdish support for Hamas. On social media and in state-aligned media outlets, Turkish politicians, academics, and pro-AKP civil-society organizations praised the demonstrators, frequently implying that they represented the views of the Kurdish public opinion.
Kurdish activists and observers, however, note the absence of any Kurdish symbols or expressions of Kurdish identity at these rallies. They argue that this portrayal unfairly presents Kurds as hostile to Jews and supportive of Hamas, despite the reality that Kurds do not support Hamas and have no antagonism toward Israel, particularly at a time when Kurds themselves face existential threats from the Turkish state.
Atrocities empowered by Turkey
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the Turkish regime has faced numerous reports of supporting and empowering Islamist and jihadi groups operating within Syria and Iraq. These reports pointed out that Turkey facilitated the influx of foreign fighters into the conflict zone, providing these groups with varying levels of logistical support, weapons, and intelligence. They coupled this assistance with indoctrination that incited anti-Kurdish sentiment.
From around 2015 onward, many of these armed elements were reorganized into proxy forces known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or the Syrian National Army (SNA). These proxy formations, supported by Turkish ground and air forces, have been involved in military campaigns targeting Kurdish-majority regions in northern Syria.
In the areas of Afrin and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ayn), operations conducted by Turkish troops alongside allied militants led to significant displacement of Kurdish civilians.
There have also been numerous reports of killings, abductions, torture, and allegations of sexual violence associated with these operations. In collaboration with groups such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), many reports suggest that Turkey-backed fighters, transported by the Turkish army, conducted genocidal attacks against Alawite communities along the western coast and Druze communities in the Sweida region in 2025.
Activists have expressed serious concerns that these atrocities constitute collective persecution and may, in some instances, have reached genocidal levels.
Empowered by Turkey, these jihadists have now turned their attention toward the Kurdish population. Turkish support for armed Islamist terrorists, driven by shared ideological affinities, risks further protracted violent conflicts in Syria and beyond and prevents the peaceful coexistence of various ethnic and religious communities and stability.
These radical jihadists, organized in a manner similar to Hamas in pursuit of broader regional objectives of the Turkish state, are not only targeting minority communities in Syria and beyond; they also represent a long-term threat to Israel.
Therefore, it is essential for both the Trump administration and the government in Jerusalem to acknowledge Ankara’s detrimental role in promoting Islamist terrorism, ethnic, religious, and political hostilities, and persistent instability in the region.
Furthermore, Turkey’s aggressive policies undermine regional peace and worsen the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Turkey is effectively seeking to supplant the influence previously exerted by the Iranian regime, particularly in relation to the promotion of Hamas-like atrocities against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
It is therefore crucial to put targeted measures in place to prevent Turkey from further promoting terrorist acts by jihadists and hostile discourses. Such measures may encompass economic sanctions aimed at Turkey’s vulnerable economy, a cessation of advanced weapon sales, and diplomatic isolation to position Turkey as a pariah state, akin to Iran.
The writer is a research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.