MK Nir Barkat, formerly mayor of Jerusalem, reached out to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on Wednesday and urged him to promote US sanctions against Turkey after a report in Britain's Telegraph revealed that Turkey was allowing Hamas a free hand within its borders.
"Once again, we have confirmation that Turkey supports terrorism and gives Hamas and everyone seeking to attack Israel a warm home," Barkat wrote to Friedman.
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Barkat said that upon reading the report, he had spoken to Friedman and asked him to make an effort to have the US apply tough sanctions to Turkey, which Barkat compared to Iran in terms of its support of terrorist activity.
According to The Telegraph report, published Wednesday, the interrogations of several terror suspects derived that senior Hamas operatives are using Turkey's largest city to plan and direct attacks in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem.
Israel has repeatedly warned Turkey that officials with Hamas, an Islamist terrorist group from the school of the Muslim Brotherhood that is also sponsored by Iran, is using its soil to plot attacks.
Still, these warnings seem to fall on deaf ears.
Last week, Erdoğan met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Ankara and declared his country "will keep on supporting our brothers in Palestine," the report said.
This support of an organization designated by many Western nations, including Israel, the United States and the European Union, as a terrorist group further seems to be in breach of a 2015 US-brokered deal with Israel, by which Turkey was meant to stop Hamas planning attacks from its soil.
Ankara has consistently failed to honor the agreement, Israeli officials said.
"Israel is extremely concerned that Turkey is allowing Hamas terrorists to operate from its territory, in planning and engaging in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians," The Telegraph quoted an Israeli foreign ministry official as saying.
Turkey has agreed to offer Hamas officials safe harbor in Istanbul even as major powers in the Arab world, such as Saudi Arabia, have expelled them over the threat they pose.
The report further quoted Israeli and Egyptian intelligence sources as saying that about a dozen senior Hamas operatives have moved to Istanbul from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in the past year alone.
A Turkish diplomatic source denied Hamas was planning terrorist attacks against Israel from Turkey, telling The Telegraph Hamas "is not a terrorist organization" but a legitimate Palestinian political party."
Hamas denied the allegations as "baseless," saying they were designed to damage the group's political ties with Ankara, the report said.
"Hamas' resistance activities are conducted only in the occupied land of Palestine," a Hamas spokesman said.
The report noted that so far, Israel has refrained from acting against Hamas operatives in Turkey, saying Jerusalem may be wary of the diplomatic fallout should it pursue a targeted assassination on a NATO member's soil, as well as over what such a move may mean to its diplomatic relations with Turkey.
Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but diplomatic relations between the two have soured in the last decade. Under Erdoğan, Turkey has become a vocal critic of Israel, sparking frequent verbal feuds with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
