The only public response heard in Israel to the results of the Turkish elections came from the mouth of former President Shimon Peres at the Herzliya Conference. On June 8, a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party suffered a defeat at the ballot box, Peres said, “I am happy about what happened in Turkey — Erdogan wanted to turn Turkey into Iran, and there is no room for two Irans in the Middle East. The results of the Turkish elections show a positive trend for Israel and the Middle East.”
Peres has a very old account to settle with the Turkish leader, ever since Erdogan sparred with him at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009. That was the incident that heralded the beginning of the crisis in the relations between the two states, which reached its height in the Marmara flotilla raid a year later in May 2010. In the violent confrontation that erupted on the flotilla that was on its way to violate the blockade on the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers killed 10 Turkish citizens.
