Turkey escalated its confrontation with Israel on Friday, with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan declaring that Ankara had “totally cut” trade relations and closed its airspace to Israeli planes. “We have totally cut our trade with Israel, we have closed off our ports to Israeli ships,” Fidan told a special parliamentary session on Gaza. “We are not allowing container ships carrying weapons and ammunition to Israel to enter our ports, and airplanes to go into our airspace,” Fidan added.
Fidan’s statement immediately created uncertainty. Within hours, a Turkish diplomatic source clarified that the airspace restrictions applied only to official Israeli military or government flights, not commercial traffic. Israeli carriers confirmed that their operations were unaffected. “Our flights are operating as scheduled with no changes, and we are in regular contact with the Civil Aviation Authority,” said Israir, while Arkia told The Times of Israel it had “received no operational instructions” from Turkish authorities.
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, a Turkey expert at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, explained that the reversal showed a lack of sincerity on Ankara’s part with regard to these new restrictions. “Given this major U-turn, delivered in English but deliberately left unaddressed in Turkish, it becomes evident that Israel was once again used as a tool for public relations purposes,” Yanarocak told JNS.
Despite the reversal on air traffic policy, Turkey has recently tightened maritime restrictions on Israeli trade. In August, Turkish port authorities began requiring letters from shipping agents declaring that vessels were not linked to Israel and not carrying hazardous or military cargo. Turkish-flagged ships, meanwhile, were prohibited from docking in Israeli ports.
The rupture followed a series of flashpoints that sharpened Ankara’s stance toward Jerusalem. Turkey’s announcement came just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a rare move, publicly recognized the Armenian genocide. Speaking on the Patrick Bet-David podcast, Netanyahu responded when asked to recognize the 1915 genocide by saying, “I just did. Here you go,” marking the first time an Israeli leader had the Ottoman Empire’s mass killings as a genocide.
At the same time, recent Israeli operations in Syria have further aggravated tensions. According to Syrian and regional reports, Israeli forces recently dismantled Turkish surveillance devices that had been embedded near Damascus, seizing what were described as “secret and sensitive” systems. The operation was seen as a direct challenge to Ankara, with Syrian and Saudi sources reporting that messages were sent to the Syrian government warning “against playing with fire and listening to Turkish orders,” and that “Turkey is trying to get closer to Israel than it should.”
The timing of Turkey’s decision to downgrade relations also coincided with Israel’s declared intention to intensify its offensive in Gaza, a step that analysts say prompted Ankara to escalate sanctions. “Turkey is adopting a gradual punishment strategy against Israel,” Yanarocak told The Jerusalem Post. “The moment Israel declared its intention to expand the military operation in Gaza, they [Ankara] made the decision that very same day to impose maritime sanctions,” he added.
The suspension of trade carries significant weight given the scope of economic ties. Two-way trade between Israel and Turkey was valued at roughly $7 billion in 2023, with Turkey ranking as Israel’s fifth-largest source of imports. Israeli exports to Turkey totaled about $1.5 to $1.6 billion, while Turkish goods accounted for about six percent of Israel’s total imports.
Tourism was also a pillar of the once-warm relations between the two countries. Istanbul had long served as a popular destination for Israelis and a major hub for connecting flights to Europe. However, since the start of the war, Israeli tourism in Turkey has been severely restricted, with the Israeli government issuing travel warnings in 2024 and 2025.
Israel and Turkey have a long record of alternating between close cooperation and sharp confrontation. In the 1990s, the two countries signed military and trade agreements that made Turkey one of Israel’s most important regional partners. Those ties later soured after the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli commandos clashed with activists on a Gaza-bound flotilla. In the aftermath of the so-called “Arab Spring,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) moved decisively toward backing the Muslim Brotherhood–aligned movements, leading to further deterioration in Israeli-Turkish ties. Relations were downgraded, and ambassadors were withdrawn.
In recent years, before the current war, there were signs of recovery, with meetings between Erdogan and Netanyahu and both governments speaking of improved relations. Since Oct. 7, 2023, however, Turkey has emerged as a leading voice in the anti-Israel movement. Ankara has been a strong supporter of the case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Turkish leadership has supplied a consistent stream of inflammatory remarks, including comparing Netanyahu to Hitler. This litany of abrasive actions has led to both countries again recalling their ambassadors.
According to Yanarocak, the recent collapse in relations is “unprecedented” and “will not be easy to reverse in the future.” He added that the deterioration of commercial, diplomatic and cultural ties removes incentives for governments to avoid conflict and makes the path towards conflict more direct. “A country will completely cut its economic and trade relations with another and close its airspace to its planes only during wartime. This move is unprecedented, removes mutual dependency, and could lead to strategic escalation,” he said. “All the mutual dependency between the two countries disappears, and once there is no dependency, it becomes very dangerous because there is nothing to lose. If there’s economy, if there’s tourism, if there are relations—then there’s something to lose, and so each side may ultimately think twice,” he added.
Analysts say the Gaza war has given Erdogan both a domestic and regional incentive to escalate tensions with Israel. “Turkey has an interest in advancing anti-Israel policy so long as the war in Gaza continues. It allows the government to build support domestically because the cause of Gaza is very popular in Turkey,” Gallia Lindenstrauss, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told JNS. Lindenstrauss explained that Erdogan has also used the crisis to boost his standing in the wider Muslim world. “Support for Gaza adds a lot to Erdogan’s popularity amongst Muslims. You can see by the polls that his popularity is growing in the Arab world,” she added.
Yanarocak added that Erdogan was “reaping major political capital from the war in Gaza,” and said the conflict was leading to “a structural change in relations, with consequences that will extend far beyond the end of the current war.” He further linked Turkey’s policy to Erdogan’s wish to “restore past glory, to once again make Turkey the strongest Muslim state. And when there is some Muslim entity, such as Gaza, that is in serious trouble, the Turkish leader sees himself as the leader of all Sunni Muslims.” This broader ambition has been tied closely to Ankara’s consistent support for Hamas and its framing of the Gaza conflict as a test of Muslim solidarity, he explained.
Turkey has been one of the strongest international backers of Hamas since the start of the war. Erdogan has hosted senior Hamas leaders in Ankara, and Turkish officials have maintained ties with the group despite Ankara’s insistence that it recognizes only Hamas’s political wing. “Turkey has been a long-time supporter of Hamas, even after Oct. 7; this is obviously a big problem for Israel and is a bad signal for the relationship,” said Lindenstrauss. Hamas, for its part, welcomed Turkey’s dissolving of economic ties with Israel. Following Fidan’s announcement on trade and airspace, the group urged “Turkey, as well as Arab and Islamic countries and the free nations of the world, to escalate punitive measures against [Israel]” and “sever all relations with it.”
Then there is Syria, which has become one of the less visible but more consequential arenas of discord between Israel and Turkey. Both governments see the country’s future as vital to their security interests.
Israel has sought to contain Iranian influence and maintain operational freedom against Hezbollah, while Turkey has invested heavily in weakening Kurdish interests in Syria and propping up the nascent Al-Shaara government. According to Lindenstrauss, “Gaza is used as an excuse for most of the conflict, but a big division between the two countries is over the future of Syria, even if that is less openly discussed.” Earlier this year, reports surfaced that the two countries had explored creating a “deconfliction mechanism” to prevent direct friction as both operate in Syrian airspace, but no such framework has materialized. Its absence has left Syria as a persistent fault line in relations, complicating efforts to stabilize ties even outside the Gaza context.
Turkey’s growing power adds weight to its confrontation with Israel. Turkey today wields a combination of military, economic and diplomatic power that makes it one of the region’s most consequential actors. It is a G20 economy with deep integration into global markets, a defense industry that exports drones and naval systems, and a NATO military backed by large-scale domestic production. Its geography provides additional leverage: control of the Dardanelles, a presence in Northern Cyprus and a foothold in both the Middle East and Europe.
Ankara has also sought to expand its influence through multilateral forums, most recently appearing at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit alongside Russia and China. Turkey’s development of advanced air defense systems, such as the newly introduced “Steel Dome,” reflects its push to enhance self-reliance in security and project power across the region.
However, despite all of this, “Turkey does not pose an existential threat to Israel,” Yanarocak told JNS. “Despite their differences, Turkey is still, at least on paper, regarded as a friendly country. Indeed, the history of bilateral relations has never witnessed a declaration of hostilities,” he noted. Lindenstrauss echoed that assessment, describing Turkey as “still only a challenge to Israel and not an open threat.” Both experts noted, however, that Ankara’s pro-Hamas policies and its friction with Israel in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean create persistent points of tension. Yanarocak characterized Turkey as occupying “a gray zone,” and added that “it is harder to respond decisively when an adversary challenges you only in certain areas.”
Yanarocak observed that Turkey’s strong diplomatic ties with Israel and aligned countries create strong incentives to avoid conflict. “Thanks to the support of reliable allies such as the United States and Azerbaijan, I believe both countries will eventually be able to reduce tensions. It is possible. Although Ankara may deny it, easing tensions is in its interest no less than it is in Jerusalem’s,” he concluded. Lindenstrauss built on this assessment, saying that while it appears both sides “are still interested in repairing the relationship,” if the conflict ever escalates, this would present a “major challenge” for Israel. “Turkey has a strong economy and a strong military,” said Lindenstrauss, “However, Turkey’s alliances, including its membership in NATO, are also a strong force for it to resolve issues with Israel.”
