Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdoğan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’

JTA – Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli compared Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Adolf Hitler and slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a post on X on Monday. 

“We all know how narcissistic power-obsessed fanatics like you begin and how they end. The Jewish people have never feared mere flesh and blood, from Pharaoh until today,” Chikli wrote. “You are nothing but a pathetic blood-soaked zero whom history will soon forget.” 

In the post, Chikli accused the Turkish leader of being a “patron of Hamas and ISIS” and described him as a “grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar” alongside an AI image of Erdoğan in front of a Nazi flag. 

Chikli’s post was in response to an address by Erdoğan last month, in which the Turkish leader called Zionism a “genocidal occupying expansionist ideology” and said the “struggle” against Zionism was for the “collective survival of ourselves and our nation”. 

Long-standing tensions between Turkey and Israel stoked by the war in Gaza have escalated in recent weeks, amid increasing Israeli concerns over the tight ties between Ankara and Washington and the possible sale of advanced American F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Erdoğan, who has consistently voiced support for Hamas, has been one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics. 

Chikli’s post followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s blistering attack against Erdoğan during an interview on Fox & Friends on Fox News on Monday. Netanyahu said Turkey was “governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel … and talks openly about conquering Jerusalem”. 

The Israeli leader warned against the sale of weaponry to Ankara, portraying Turkey as an aggressive country that didn’t help the US battle Iran. He spoke in advance of US President Donald Trump’s trip to Ankara late on Tuesday for a two-day summit of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

“For a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘death to America’ from that side of the spectrum, I don’t think they should be given F-35s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu told Fox News. 

Such a sale would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and … by America’s posture in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said. 

Relations between the two regional powers have also been aggravated by the Israeli government’s 28 June decision to recognise the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during and immediately after World War I. 

Turkey has condemned Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. It’s a move so diplomatically controversial that to date, only some 33 countries, aside from Israel, have taken this step, including the US in 2021. 

According to Politico, Erdoğan said in a public address last week, “We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73 000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.” 

Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Gideon Sa’ar, also took aim at Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, during a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, decrying Fidan’s comments to CNN Türk on Friday in which he said that Israel had become a “burden that humanity can no longer bear”. 

“The remarks by Turkey’s foreign minister are a clear call for genocide,” Sa’ar said. “The Jewish people know all too well what happens when such words are allowed to go unanswered. The first step on the road to genocide is dehumanisation.”