NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an “extremely wise” leader who would avoid a conflict with Israel, while declining to speculate on the possibility of war between the two countries.
Speaking to the UAE’s state-run newspaper The National on the sidelines of the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, Rutte echoed U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent praise of Erdoğan when asked whether a potential conflict involving Turkey, Syria and Israel could trigger Article 5, NATO’s collective defense clause.
“I completely concur also with what President Trump said about Erdoğan, that he is a wise leader. He has been there for years in this role and in his job,” he said.
Asked whether Erdoğan could be drawn into a confrontation with Israel, Rutte said he believed the Islamist leader would “avoid getting into a situation which gets out of hand.”
“What he tries to do—this is exactly the role Turkey can play, like hosting this fantastic summit now here, being such an important ally in NATO—they are also the go-to people when it comes to finding ways to come to a deal, because of the standing of President Erdoğan, his foreign minister, his whole team,” he continued.
Pressed by the Emirati outlet whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could make war “unavoidable,” the NATO secretary-general declined to speculate.
“Let’s not forget what happened on the 7th of October, 2023, this terrible attack by Hamas on Israel,” he said. “So it started not with Israel, but obviously, no, let me not speculate on what could happen in the next steps.”
מזכ"ל נאט"ו על האפשרות לעימות בין ישראל לטורקיה (חברה בנאט"ו) pic.twitter.com/swv3hBKW2K
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) July 10, 2026
Netanyahu told CNN on Tuesday that Turkey has “aggressive aspirations” as he warned the United States that supplying Ankara with fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets would “destroy the power balance in the Middle East.”
“It’s a regime that’s infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States. He harbors Hamas, the Hamas terrorists. He supports them, he finances them. He’s thrown his opponents in jail, all of them. He throws more journalists in jail than anyone can understand. So, he’s not exactly a model ally of the United States,” said Netanyahu.
Erdoğan “threatens to destroy my country, the one and only Jewish state,” he continued. “His number two says that we have no place among the nations, and you know what that means. And his number three, the interior minister, says that he’s looking forward to be the governor of Jerusalem—hello, sovereign country?”
Last month, Netanyahu said that Israel takes Erdoğan’s repeated statements against the Jewish state “very seriously.”
“Hardly a day goes by without Erdoğan calling for the destruction of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “We take these words very seriously, because if we have learned one thing from the history of our people, it is that when someone says he intends to destroy you, take him seriously.”
He added that Jerusalem would raise the issue with Washington. “We are not ignoring this,” the prime minister said.
Netanyahu was referring to Erdoğan’s recent remarks that “genocidal, occupying, expansionist” Zionism poses an existential threat to Turkey, continuing a pattern of harsh rhetoric since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks and the ensuing Gaza war.
