Many dismiss Erdoğan’s pronouncements on Jerusalem as hyperbole aimed at domestic consumption—and on the latter, they are right. But the pronouncements themselves are anything but hyperbolic.
They are part of Turkey’s effort to dominate the Middle East politically, militarily and ideologically, and to control the Eastern Mediterranean.
Erdoğan makes no effort to hide this. He calls Jerusalem “our city,” invoking the Ottoman occupation and the empire’s withdrawal after World War I as though that somehow granted modern Turkey a continuing right to claim it.
History à la Turca. As for actual history, the Arabs launched the 1948 war declaring their intention to annihilate the Jews, who had never left Jerusalem. East Jerusalem then came under Jordanian occupation, with which the Arabs of Palestine had absolutely no problem. And how could they? It was after 1963 that they “decided” that they were Palestinians, in fact, the Palestinians.
During the first days of that occupation, the Jewish part of the city was flattened. In 1967, the Arabs started another war with the same genocidal objective and lost the rest of the city as well.
Never before in history has a group of people started wars, lost them, and then demanded the return of what they “lost,” even though it was never theirs to begin with.
And the world is simply expected to hand it “back” to them!
Back in Ankara, this is not merely Tayyip’s brand of populism. It reflects both a historical claim and a role that Turkey believes is rightfully its own.
Turkey does not need to conquer Jerusalem militarily in 2026. It needs only to secure recognition as the protector of Al-Aqsa and the chief mobilizer of Muslim public opinion. It is challenging Jordan’s role, laying claim to leadership of the Islamic world, drawing closer to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, controlling Syria, and extending its reach into Lebanon.
And it is doing so with more than words.
By 2023, the state-run Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, TİKA, had completed more than 1,000 projects in the West Bank and Gaza.
Turkish delegations liaise with Islamic waqf authorities, fund “social initiatives,” restore Ottoman monuments, and support Islamist organizations. This “humanitarian” presence is being converted into an instrument of influence, portraying the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamism as “pure” in contrast to the region’s supposedly “immoral” secular and monarchical governments.
Turkey’s relationship with Hamas is no coincidence. Erdoğan calls the terrorist organization a “liberation movement,” while Hamas operatives operate in Turkey with remarkable ease. The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on individuals accused of financing Hamas terrorism there and of transferring money on its behalf to Gaza and the West Bank.
The core of Turkey’s project, however, lies in Syria. Military bases and defence agreements are bringing Ankara to Israel’s doorstep while extending its power projection across the Arab world.
In the eyes of Arab societies increasingly turning toward Islam, the “new” Turkey no longer embodies the “secular decadence” of Kemalism. Through that same “humanitarian” penetration—and with Qatari money—its arc of influence continues to expand. The map speaks for itself: the stronger that arc becomes, the more clearly two obstacles emerge, two “foreign bodies” in its path—Israel and Cyprus.
Turkey is arming the occupied territories and establishing a drone base at Lefkoniko, a naval base, F-16 deployments, and air-defence systems. Our alliance with Israel and Greece infuriates Ankara not because we threaten Turkey but because it complicates its bid for dominance.
Anyone who imagines that, should Turkey prevail and Israel be weakened, we in Cyprus would not be the first to go has probably lost all sense of reality.
The erosion of the West has been under way for two decades, with Turkey and Qatar playing leading roles. Doha, meanwhile, has bought whatever it could across the Western world: pouring billions into prestigious American universities, amassing more property in London than the British royal family itself and keeping politicians everywhere exceedingly well fed.
And us? And us? We have surrendered the public debate to cretins and imbeciles who strengthen those who would destroy us, at the expense of those who do not live in the Middle Ages, who support us and to whom we owe tourism, investment, greater security and economic growth. Israel.
We have surrendered it to every philistine of our time and every unwashed self-centered poseur cosplaying as a revolutionary aboard the empty—yes, empty!—boats Hamas hires to “deliver aid.”
To every conspiracy-addled fool who, in 2026, still swallows the “Second Zion” fantasy whole: the claim that the Jews intend to buy us out.
Just the other day, they mocked Israel’s statement marking the Turkish invasion—the only such statement on record, aside from Greece’s—while conveniently forgetting Abbas’s reference to the “Greek Cypriot administration of southern Cyprus.”
Then we were told it was entirely the translator’s fault, and the idiots swallowed that too.
Where did this happen? Here—in a country where a terrorist network was uncovered after allegedly plotting to blow us up, having been taken in and fed by us for decades.
No rational person can ever entrust their fate to idiots—neither directly nor to those who refuse to confront them for fear of losing a few likes on Facebook.
Anyone who does so deserves everything he gets.
