If the United States and Israel succeed in destroying Iran, Turkey may be next. This is no longer a speculative provocation whispered on the margins of Washington’s think‑tank ecosystem. It is increasingly an articulated narrative, voiced by senior Israeli political figures, echoed by right‑wing American commentators, and amplified by a growing constellation of states allied with Israel.
The language being used is not new. Rather, it is a familiar script – one that has preceded sanctions, destabilisation, and war across the Middle East for decades. The implications are unmistakable: a powerful regional actor that refuses subordination to Israel is being rebranded as an existential threat requiring containment – or worse.
Most analyses of the current US-Israeli war on Iran have focused on escalation into the Gulf. Far less attention has been paid to the intensifying rhetorical and strategic campaign directed at Turkey. Yet the signals are becoming impossible to ignore.
Israeli rhetoric repurposed
On 17 February 2026, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, declared bluntly: “A new Turkish threat is emerging… Turkey is the new Iran.” He went further, warning that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is “sophisticated, dangerous, and… seeks to encircle Israel.”
Bennett accused Ankara of “trying to flip Saudi Arabia against [Israel]” and establishing a “hostile Sunni axis with nuclear Pakistan” as well as attempting to create a “new choke ring” via Syria and Gaza.
Bennett’s language is not accidental. It mirrors, almost verbatim, the rhetoric deployed against Iran for decades to justify a permanent posture of confrontation. Today, that same logic is being repurposed in a discursive move designed to reclassify Turkey from being a regional power critical of Israel into a civilisational enemy.
This shift is not merely rhetorical. Bennett explicitly argued that “a weakened Tehran” creates “a summons to hunt down enemies ‘throughout the Middle East’ before they can solidify.” In this formulation, Turkey is no longer a rival power – it is a future target.
The warning signs extend beyond Bennett.
On 27 February, former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant also escalated criticism of Ankara. While Gallant emphasized diplomacy, he simultaneously gestured towards coercive measures, suggesting Western states reconsider arms sales to Turkey, despite its status as a NATO member. The contradiction in this proposed strategy is revealing – because diplomacy, in this framing, is not engagement between equals but pressure designed to force Turkey back into alignment with Israel.
Rupture in Israel– Turkey relations
The deterioration of relations between Turkey and Israel did not occur in a vacuum. Since coming to power in the early 2000s, Erdogan has been increasingly critical of Israel, particularly following Israel’s 2010 attack on a Gaza‑bound flotilla that killed ten Turkish activists – a defining rupture in bilateral relations. Israel’s military operations against Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, over the past decade and a half has further inflamed Turkish public opinion, pushing Ankara towards an openly confrontational stance against Israel’s genocidal policies and territorial ambitions, especially after October 2023.
Turkey’s role in post‑Assad Syria has also become a central faultline. Since the fall of Bashar al‑Assad’s regime in December 2024, Ankara has expanded its presence, controlling territory in northern Syria, and providing backing to Syria’s interim government including political, economic and security cooperation.
For Israel, this is deeply unsettling. Türkiye’s stated priority – of restoring Syrian territorial integrity and central authority – runs directly counter to Israel’s long‑standing preference for a fragmented regional security landscape. It also threatens Israel’s land-grabbing parts of Syrian territory.
Turkey’s close ties with Qatar have become another Israeli red line and are regarded as a “strategic threat”.
The Israel-US war on Iran has further inflamed relations because Ankara has sought de‑escalation and has refused to allow its territory or airspace to be used for attacks on Iran. Erdogan has also directly discussed the recent interception of Iranian missiles in its airspace with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian to reduce the potential for escalation.
From ‘periphery doctrine’ to ‘hexagon of alliances’
The deepening rupture between Israel and Turkey represents the last nail in the coffin of Israel’s historic “periphery doctrine.” Developed in the late 1950s under Prime Minister David Ben‑Gurion, the doctrine proposed that Israel seek alliances with non‑Arab regional powers – notably Turkey, pre‑revolutionary Iran, and Ethiopia.
Today, two of those former pillars – Turkey and Iran – are treated as enemies. But the doctrine has not disappeared; it is being repurposed into a policy of containment towards Turkey.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently outlined a “hexagon of alliances” – including India, Greece, Cyprus, and unspecified Arab, African, and Asian countries – designed to constrain Turkey’s regional influence. In recent months, Israel has hosted the leaders of Greece, Cyprus, and India to cement this alliance.
In December 2025, standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Netanyahu warned that “those who fantasise they can re‑establish their empires and their dominion over our lands” should “forget it” – a statement widely interpreted as a reference to Turkey.
The irony is stark. Anti‑imperial rhetoric is being mobilised to justify a new imperial alignment and architecture of regional dominance. Israel’s goal is to supplement the Abraham Accords with a broader regional security network which will ensure its supremacy and neutralise any potential for Palestinian liberation.
Manufacturing the Turkish ‘threat’
The ideological groundwork for a broader confrontation is also being laid in American media and think‑tank circles. Writing in The New Conservative on 3 March, Sumantra Maitra highlighted the emergence of “a coordinated effort in narrative manufacturing about how Turkish secularism is in jeopardy, how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the gravest threat in the Middle East since Suleiman the Magnificent, and how ‘Western Civilization’ informs us that Turkey is the real enemy.”
Maitra also pointed to figures such as Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, who has posted in Turkish on X, asking whether Ankara in 2036 will resemble Tehran in 2026.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on 4 March, Bradley Martin of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, which is a US Department of War think tank, urged NATO to reconsider Turkey’s membership arguing that “the U.S. shouldn’t forget that Turkey opposes U.S. foreign policy and is a headache for its allies.”
Right‑wing media outlets have eagerly joined the chorus. In the New York Post, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies accused Ankara of “cultivating terrorist proxies in the Middle East for years.” This deploys the same language long used to justify sanctions and war against Iran. Schanzer further accuses Türkiye, alongside Qatar, of seeking to resurrect the influence and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the United States designated a terrorist organisation in January.
This narrative manufacturing follows a well‑worn path. It relies on selective history, inflated threat allegations, and the conflation of regimes opposed to Israel with existential danger.
In Turkish media, a grim assessment is taking hold – that Turkey is being positioned as the next target after Iran. This perception is not based on paranoia but on historical memory. The path from demonisation to destabilisation, the transformation of a noncompliant regional power into a civilizational threat, is well worn – Iraq, Libya, and Iran all stand as warnings.
The lesson should be clear by now. In recasting Turkey as “the new Iran”, Israel’s leaders and right-wing American think tankers and media pundits are attempting to normalise endless war through recycled narratives of civilisational threat.
Whether Turkey’s status as a NATO member will save it from this threat remains to be seen. But if this framing goes unchallenged, today’s rhetorical escalation may harden into tomorrow’s sanctions and war plans.
Mandy Turner is a senior researcher with Security in Context. Her research focuses on the political economy of conflict and peace, humanitarianism and multilateralism, and the situation in Palestine and Israel.
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