{"id":202630,"date":"2026-07-12T12:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/202630\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T12:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:53:09","slug":"turkeys-fm-changes-speech-marks-problem-as-benjamin-netanyahu-and-not-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/202630\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s FM changes speech, marks problem as Benjamin Netanyahu and not Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think there is no reason to have an open conflict,\u201d Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan<\/a> Fidan told The National on Friday, only a week after making far more critical comments on CNN T\u00fcrk, decried by Israeli politicians as genocidal.<\/p>\n

Complaining of the alleged anti-Ankara rhetoric coming from Jerusalem, Fidan<\/a> directed criticism at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s coalition and select members of the opposition, but asserted that \u201cthere are still very sane and good people with wisdom and strategic minds in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot all of them are like Netanyahu and some people, but Netanyahu and some people, as they get closer to the elections, they need an enemy. They were at war with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and now they need another enemy,\u201d Fidan told the Emirati site, adding that he believed Ankara was being shifted into that role.<\/p>\n

The comments were far more moderate than the ones made on CNN, where he complained: “These people (in reference to Israel) have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

“No matter which framework you use, there is no parameter under which these people can be sustained,” Fidan said in the earlier interview.<\/p>\n

\"Turkey'sTurkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks to the reporters at Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Antalya, Turkey, April 19, 2026 (credit: REUTERS\/UMIT BEKTAS)<\/p>\n

Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies specializing in Turkish foreign policy, told The Jerusalem Post that the interview with The National was Fidan\u2019s way of clarifying his previous remarks and \u201cdistancing his criticism from Israel as a whole to the actions of the current Israeli government.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHis statement that there are \u2018reasonable\u2019 people was especially reassuring that should Israel have another government, things might look different between Israel and Turkey,\u201d she assessed.<\/p>\n

That same interpretation was offered to the\u00a0Post by Istanbul-based geopolitical analyst Burak Can \u00c7elik, who said that the current abrasiveness of Ankara\u2019s comments on Israel doesn\u2019t suggest \u201ca permanent and irreversible strategic break\u201d from the Jewish state.\u00a0Rather, in Fidan’s approach, \u201csecurity, balance of power and changing regional conditions are as decisive as ideological discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the two countries are in a controlled competition. However, while discourses and dynamics change rapidly in the Middle East, geography and common interests are permanent,\u201d he noted. \u201cBefore October 7, relations between Turkey and Israel had always been at a good level, with joint collaborations in terms of trade, technology, culture and tourism, so these discourses may be a signal of controlled softness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel, Turkey clash over F-35 sale<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar<\/a> condemned Fidan\u2019s earlier comments, alleging that they amounted to a \u201cclear call for genocide\u201d and said his words would not go unchallenged, marking yet another confrontation between Israeli and Turkish officials over public statements made. The sudden shift has been interpreted by some as tied to Ankara\u2019s wider goals, specifically the acquisition of F-35 fighter jets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ankara recently hosted US President Donald Trump for a NATO summit, and the president expressed a clear willingness to remove the sanctions blocking Ankara\u2019s path to the fighter jet.<\/p>\n

“Turkey has been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal. … It’s a great plane, it’s the best, currently the best plane by far. And it’s certainly something we will consider,” Trump said, announcing that Washington would be dropping sanctions against Ankara originally placed over Turkey\u2019s possession of Russian S-400s.<\/p>\n

The issue of Turkey\u2019s rhetoric has already been raised by a group of bipartisan American lawmakers, who penned a letter to Trump complaining that the potential F-35 sales were concerning given statements by the officials, and Ankara\u2019s relationship with Iran.<\/p>\n

Israel, a major ally of Washington, has also been vocal in its opposition to the NATO country receiving the F-35s, Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, a Turkey expert at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, noted to the Post. He argued that Fidan is trying to quell Israeli fears about the acquisition of the fighter jets.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless these statements are accompanied by tangible confidence-building measures, such as ending unilateral sanctions against Israel, halting the systematic delegitimization campaign against it, and restoring people-to-people ties by resuming direct flights between Istanbul and Tel Aviv, they should be regarded as lip service,\u201d Yanarocak argued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think there is no reason to have an open conflict,\u201d Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[18790,2092,37,59524,24095,3988,1176],"class_list":["post-202630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-erdogan","tag-f-35","tag-israel","tag-israel-and-turkey","tag-israel-turkey-relations","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116907108427381281","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}