Turkish President Erdogan sent a congratulatory letter to Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu for his victory in the elections.
In the congratulatory letter, he expressed hope that the new government in Israel will continue the cooperation between the two countries in all fields, in a way that will bring peace and stability to the region.
President Erdogan has made a strategic change in his relationship with Israel in the last year, not out of love for Israel but as a result of political and economic considerations to improve Turkey’s regional and international standing and the desire to share in the profits from the natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea.
The personal relationship between him and Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu is extremely bad and over the past decade he has often personally attacked Netanyahu for his treatment of the Palestinians.
Last week, Turkey embarrassed the Lapid government and President Herzog who responded to President Erdogan’s advances and agreed to open a new page in Israel-Turkey relations.
The Turkish Foreign Minister announced in Ankara that Turkey rejected Israel’s demands to expel the Hamas leadership from its territory during the bilateral contacts between the two countries.
He added that his country does not see the Hamas movement as a terrorist movement and refuses to expel its leaders from Turkey.
Last month Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Turkey and met with President Erdogan and, among other things, he demanded that he expel the Hamas leadership and the operatives of its military wing from Turkey.
In recent months, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh moved with his family members to live permanently in Turkey and he was joined by other senior members of the movement, what is of great concern to Israel is precisely the physical presence of representatives of the military wing of Hamas in Turkey.
The office of the military branch in Istanbul
The military wing of Hamas has a large office in Istanbul. Part of its activity deals with directing attacks in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and attempts to recruit Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and students from among Israeli Arabs studying or visiting Turkey into the ranks of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Turkey, through its president Erdogan, leads the “Muslim Brotherhood” axis in the Middle East , which is the parent movement of Hamas.
More than two years ago, Hamas implicated Turkey in the case of laundering and smuggling money to the military wing in the Gaza Strip through 2 large money exchange offices in Istanbul.
As a result, a court in Saudi Arabia convicted about 60 Hamas operatives who were members of this network of money laundering and smuggling, they were arrested on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after Israel and the United States provided Saudi intelligence with accurate information about their activities in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they were sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years.
The person in charge of the Hamas office in Turkey is Saleh al-Arouri, number two in the organization who serves as the head of the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank and the contact person for Hezbollah and Iran, however, according to sources in the Gaza Strip, it seems that the secret branch in Istanbul is also a personal project of Yihya Sinwar and he used it mainly for the purposes of The military wing in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has so far failed in its efforts with the Turkish authorities to bring about the closure of the military branch of Hamas in Istanbul, it has been trying to bring about the closure of the office in Istanbul for almost 10 years. According to Hamas sources, the organization operates a sophisticated listening room in Istanbul for means of communication and communication in Israel and provides intelligence to Hezbollah and Iran.
The official Turkish announcement about the refusal of Israel’s demands regarding Hamas is a public slap in the face to President Herzog and the Lapid government, it was probably made before Binyamin Netanyahu entered the Prime Minister’s office to establish facts on the ground.
This announcement reflects once again that President Erdogan has not changed his attitude towards Hamas and that the improvement of relations he initiated with Israel is intended to serve only the interests of Turkey without taking into account the security requirements of Israel dealing with the terrorist activities of Hamas from within Turkish soil.
Soon the naval flotillas to the Gaza Strip will be renewed to break the Israeli blockade, it is possible that they will once again try to get help from organizations in Turkey as happened with the “Marmara” flotilla in 2010 which led to a major crisis in Israel’s relations with Turkey.
Prime Minister-designate Netanyahu will have to reassess Israel’s relations with Turkey despite the renewal of normalization between the two countries in the past year, Israel must not insist that the terrorist activity of Hamas from Turkish soil against Israel must be stopped, in practice Turkey is considered a state that supports terrorism as long as this activity continues on its territory while turning a blind eye by President Erdogan.
