Erdogan's Turkey is a two-faced, hostile actor

This position holds that Erdogan's Turkey is a two-faced, hostile actor whose ambitions threaten regional stability. Its advocates describe Turkey as an unreliable NATO ally and an opportunist that plays a double game, and they cite its ties to Hamas and Russia and its Blue Homeland maritime ambitions as grounds for treating it as a rising rival.

Israeli outlets carry it. It appears in the dispute over Turkey as a contested regional power, in the antagonism between Turkey and Israel, in Turkey's role as regional mediator, which it calls opportunistic and two-faced, and in the spillover of the Iran war into Turkey, where it holds that Turkey is on the wrong side.

The competing position holds that Turkey is a legitimate, independent middle power and an indispensable broker, not a junior partner to be dictated to. Recent events show Israel and Turkey trading warnings over Syria after an Israeli strike on an airbase, with Turkey denying it had troops there and vowing support for Damascus. They also show Turkey seeking an Interpol red notice for Netanyahu, whose office called Erdogan an antisemitic dictator.