Netanyahu’s office scorns Turkish regime threat to arrest PM

Israel “has long ceased to be impressed by Turkey’s hypocrisy,” the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said on Friday, hours after Ankara issued another arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “is an antisemitic dictator who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him,” the PMO said in a separate statement in English.

“He now seeks to extend his aggression against Israel into Syria. Israel will not tolerate it,” the statement read.

“Erdoğan’s pathetic attempt to intimidate the leaders and soldiers of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, will go nowhere,” it added.

In the Hebrew statement, the PMO stressed that Israel will continue to “act forcefully” against Turkey’s attempts to undermine stability in the region.

Earlier on Friday, Turkey’s Justice Minister Akin Gürlek announced on X the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, as part of a supposed investigation into Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound protest flotilla in spring 2026.

Ankara issued its first arrest warrants on July 14 for Israel’s prime minister and another person identified as “Afek Moskovitch”—whose title was not clarified by Turkish authorities—over allegations of genocide in Gaza.

AFP cited Turkish İhlas News Agency at the time as saying that Moskovitch is an Israel Defense Forces soldier who posted footage of himself on Instagram destroying property in Gaza.

Netanyahu, Moskovitch, and 33 other Israelis were mentioned by Gürlek on Friday in connection with the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla that sought to breach the blockade of Gaza, which aims to prevent the Hamas terrorist organization from acquiring arms to boost its power.

Gürlek wrote on X that Ankara “categorically reject[s]” the notion that Netanyahu’s government is “untouchable and unaccountable.”

Following Netanyahu’s office’s statement, the Turkish Presidency’s Directorate of Communications lashed out at the “outrageous ravings” of the Israeli PMO, saying that they are “devoid of historical fact and political seriousness.”

Jerusalem’s attempt to portray Turkey as a threat is part of a “cheap political strategy” and poses “serious risks” not only to Israeli society, “but also to regional and global peace and stability,” the Directorate of Communications said.

Turkey building ‘substantial military presence’ in Syria

Also on Friday, Netanyahu’s international spokesman Doron Spielman laid out in a recorded message the reasons for the increased tensions of late between Jerusalem and Ankara over Syria.

Presenting a map of Syria, Spielman said that Israel has deployed troops in “one-10th of 1%” of Syrian territory adjacent to the Golan Heights border in order to protect Israeli residents from threats posed by terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and ISIS following the fall of the Bashar Assad regime in December 2024.

By contrast, Turkey now has a “substantial military presence” in roughly 5% of territories in northwestern Syria, the spokesman said.

Israel’s position is very clear, he continued.

“We will not allow Turkey to entrench itself in Syria and to be moving steadily south toward Israel’s border.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed on Saturday that Israel carried out the overnight Monday (Aug. 10-11) airstrikes on the Abu al-Duhur Military Airbase in Idlib in northwestern Syria as a counter measure against the deployment of Turkish forces in the area.

Erdoğan “was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was forced to back down,” Katz said, pledging to act against any threat as the central lesson of the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.