December 15, 2025
Dayan Center - Delegitimization in Action: Turkey’s Diplomatic, Judicial and Public Diplomacy Campaign Against Israel
On 7 October, following Hamas’s large-scale terrorist assault on Israel, one of the most immediate and consequential developments stemming from Israel’s subsequent war of self-defense was the marked deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations.
One month prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were posing before cameras alongside their senior advisers, standing before the flags of both nations at the Turkish House in New York.[1] Yet barely two years after that photograph was taken, on 7 November, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued arrest warrants against 37 senior Israeli officials involved in the conduct of the war against Hamas - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, and the Chief of General Staff Eyal Zamir.[2]
The announcement of this decision extinguished the nascent hopes that the tension between Israel and Turkey might be gradually de-escalated following the fragile Gaza ceasefire brokered through the initiative of U.S. President Donald Trump. Through such a politically motivated decision, Ankara has signaled that it has no intention of returning to normalized relations with Jerusalem despite the ceasefire. On the contrary, the Erdoğan administration has been pursuing a policy of delegitimization against Israel since the outbreak of the war, one that has long since transcended the boundaries of criticism.
Read the full article on the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak is an Adjunct Fellow at the Turan Research Center.