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Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/erdogan-wages-war-on-the-west-and-israel/
Turkey's Erdogan Wages War on the West and Israel
(Israel Hayom) David M. Weinberg - American and European leaders are revving up their engines to coddle, cradle, and embrace the radical, antisemitic, and viciously anti-Western and anti-Israeli Turkish President Erdogan at a meeting of NATO leaders in Ankara. Washington just announced that it will ship to Ankara eighty engines worth more than $700 million for Turkey's homegrown fighter jet, and it is positively considering letting Turkey back into the F-35 jet program. This is astonishingly unwise and infuriating because Turkey under Erdogan openly seeks to undermine the values and long-term interests of the West, and to obliterate Israel. Erdogan regularly brands the U.S. a declining hegemon and an "imperialist sponsor of terrorism," sides with Russia against the West in defense of Iran, and hosts Hamas military headquarters. It is time to confront Erdogan about his much-too-close alignment with Russia, China, and Iran; his military occupation of northern Cyprus and northern Syria; and the actual war he wages against Israel. Erdogan is a true-believing antisemite who considers classic antisemitic myths like the Protocols of the Elder of Zion as truth. He honestly hates Jews and Israelis, and his preference is to lead a pan-Islamic coalition to crush Israel. In 2025, he publicly prayed that "Allah make Zionist Israel destroyed and devastated." Just this week, he repeated the wild claim that the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey was organized by "the genocidal, occupying, and expansionist ideology called Zionism." According to President Trump, Erdogan's military was prepped to join Iran's war against Israel this year until Trump "asked Erdogan not to do so." Last week, the IDF revealed yet another Hamas terrorist network directed from Turkish soil which recruited operatives to carry out terror attacks and which transferred weapons and funds into Judea and Samaria. Erdogan has jailed more journalists, judges, generals and academics than any other country in the world, including China. He is building 40,000 new jail cells to handle the overload. Erdogan needs to be cut down to size. How can it be that American and European leaders don't see this? The writer is managing senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem.