Turkey has perfected a method: it waves the Palestinian flag while reinforcing the forces that fractured Palestinian politics. Ankara speaks in the language of liberation; its policy is obstruction. It does not extract Palestinians from war, poverty, division or stagnation. It sustains the actor that produced them and requires them to persist: Hamas.
It is a hostile takeover of the Palestinian cause. A pro Palestinian policy would strengthen the Palestinian Authority, preserve the path to a demilitarized Palestinian state beside a secure democratic Israel with a durable Jewish majority, protect Jerusalem from interference, disarm Hamas, rebuild Gaza without terror rule and defend the Israeli Palestinian security architecture that has saved lives for decades. Turkey does the opposite. It legitimises Hamas. It instrumentalises Palestinian suffering for regional projection.
Turkey is anti Israel in rhetoric and anti Palestinian in outcome.
The central fact: Hamas is the internal enemy of Palestinian national interests. It seized Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, fractured governance, militarised the enclave and turned civilians into hostages of its doctrine. It offers no path to sovereignty, no functional economy, no framework for coexistence and no interest in civil order. Hamas requires failure. It requires destruction to remain relevant. It requires Israeli Palestinian compromise to remain impossible, because compromise would expose it as a movement of perpetual war, not liberation.
Turkey acts on this, making Ankara's relationship with Hamas a calculation. Turkey's president has described Hamas as a liberation movement. Hamas leaders have been received in Ankara and Istanbul when isolation was required. Turkish channels record meetings with senior Hamas figures. American sanctions have identified Turkey based financiers and facilitators tied to Hamas networks. This is a system.
Each gesture legitimises Hamas and undermines the Palestinian Authority. Each platform rewards violence. Each accusation against Israel obscures the question Palestinians must confront: who destroyed Gaza's chance to become a functioning society. The answer is Hamas. Turkey refuses to state it.
Israeli Palestinian security coordination remains a central pillar of regional stability. It emerged from necessity. Since Oslo, both sides built a coordination architecture of liaison, civil management and economic flows pending final status arrangements. The system has been strained and attacked, yet it endures because both sides recognise a basic truth: without security there is no politics; without coordination there is no Palestinian Authority; without the Palestinian Authority there is a vacuum for Hamas, Iran and other destabilising actors.
This architecture shields Israelis from terror and insulates Palestinians from Hamas. It sustains the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, prevents cities from becoming Gaza and preserves order. Hamas opposes it because it blocks Hamas. Turkey targets it for the same reason.
One cannot support Palestinian statehood while empowering the organisation committed to preventing it. Advocating self determination while dismantling governance is contradiction, not policy.
This defines Ankara's position on the two state framework. On paper, Turkey supports it. In practice, it empowers an actor that rejects it. Hamas does not recognise Israel, does not renounce armed struggle and preserves the objective of total liberation. This is not a two state vision. It is a permanent conflict paradigm.
Israel has not dismantled the framework that preserves a political horizon. Governments have disagreed on timing and risk. The Oslo architecture remains. The Palestinian Authority operates. Coordination, civil mechanisms and economic relations continue. The legal structure in Judea and Samaria remains interim, not annexed. Israel preserves the architecture that can sustain separation and a final status arrangement. Turkey empowers the force that prevents it.
Jerusalem illustrates Ankara's method. Turkish activity in Arab neighbourhoods and around the Temple Mount is presented as welfare, heritage and religious solidarity. It operates as interference. Turkish agencies and affiliated networks expand influence in East Jerusalem, the Old City and the Al Aqsa environment, framed through Ottoman symbolism and ideological alignment. This places Turkey inside the most sensitive space in the region and challenges Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority for authority.
This harms Palestinians. Jerusalem's Arab residents require stability, employment, education, healthcare, tourism, commerce and stable governance. They do not require external ideological theatre. They do not require foreign actors transforming the Temple Mount into a stage for regional ambition. Each escalation damages livelihoods, narrows political space and empowers radicals.
Turkey claims to defend Al Aqsa. It instrumentalises it. It claims to defend Palestinians. It weakens their leadership.
The inversion extends to Ankara's use of the term genocide. The charge is political. Genocide requires intent to destroy a protected group. Israel's campaign in Gaza followed the Hamas led October 7 massacre, a crime against humanity with genocidal intent evident in its execution and targets. Israel's objective has been Hamas: its command structure, capabilities and ability to repeat the attack. Hamas embeds within civilian environments and demands that response be defined as genocide.
This is moral fraud. Civilian casualties in war are severe. They are not proof of genocide. The destruction caused by Hamas operating within civilian infrastructure does not demonstrate intent to destroy a people. Israel has fought a terrorist organisation that deliberately positioned civilians as shields. Turkey understands this. The genocide accusation obscures Hamas responsibility, delegitimises Israel and positions Turkey as a moral arbiter while shielding the actor that created the battlefield.
Turkey's historical record deepens the contradiction. The state invoking genocide remains unwilling to fully confront the Ottoman destruction of Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The Armenian genocide stands as a defining catastrophe of the twentieth century. The broader campaign against Christian minorities has been recognised by leading scholars as genocidal. The well known statement attributed to Hitler before the invasion of Poland reflected the consequence of impunity: when one annihilation is forgotten, another becomes possible.
Turkey applies a vocabulary abroad that it rejects at home. Cyprus completes the pattern. Turkey condemns Israel while maintaining the occupation of northern Cyprus. The 1974 intervention produced a breakaway entity deemed invalid by the United Nations Security Council. It remains recognised only by Turkey. European legal findings have treated Turkey as exercising effective control in the north. The result is prolonged partition, militarisation and unresolved property claims.
The comparison with Judea and Samaria stands. Turkey established and sustains a separate entity in northern Cyprus and seeks its normalisation. Israel has not created a proxy Palestinian state, has not annulled Oslo and has not eliminated the Palestinian Authority. Its control remains tied to an interim framework shaped by agreements and security requirements. Turkey's position in Cyprus rests on denial and permanence.
Ankara has forfeited the authority to lecture on law, occupation or self determination.
A pro Palestinian policy is measured by outcomes. It strengthens institutions over militias, coordination over chaos, economic flows over isolation and stability in Jerusalem over escalation. It supports a demilitarized Palestinian state beside Israel rather than the erasure of Israel. It requires Hamas to disarm, release hostages and relinquish control of Gaza so reconstruction can proceed under responsible governance.
Turkey does none of this. It offers Palestinians only rhetoric and ruin. It subordinates Palestinian politics to external agendas and fragmentation, weaponising the flag for a different future. No serious policymaker should confuse the two.
Shay Gal works with governments and international institutions on strategy, risk, and security decision-making in high-stakes environments.
