Israeli actor and theater director Zion Ashkenazi was excited when he got back from Turkey, where he was invited to perform his one-man show “Jean Genet, Son of a Bitch” at the 2015 Bilkent Theater Days festival in Ankara. The reactions he received there and what he heard during his journey made it clear to him that Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is plagued by complex internal issues and the president’s aggressive power grabs. It is also divided over attitudes toward Israel. Ever since Erdogan rose to power, the remarkable alliance between Turkey and Israel has deteriorated into a bitter rivalry. With the Mavi Marmara flotilla crisis May 2010, hostilities between the two countries almost led to the severing of diplomatic relations.

Over the past few years, on at least two occasions, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning, saying that the safety of Israelis visiting Turkey could not be assured, since the country had undergone such drastic changes. With the current government in Ankara openly supporting the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, even going so far as to allow Hamas activist Salah al-Arouri to operate freely in Istanbul, it is only natural that Israeli tourists would cross Antalya and Istanbul off their lists of favorite tourist destinations. Given the tangled and tense relationships between the two countries, the way that Ashkenazi was received in Ankara is evidence that the reality of the situation is even more complicated than most people understand it to be.

“Jean Genet, Son of a Bitch” is the story of the sensational life of French author and poet Jean Genet, a male prostitute and thief active in Paris during the 20th century. Genet was the son of a prostitute, who abandoned him when he was just one year old. He wrote an account of his turbulent life among the pimps, thieves and murderers of the Paris underworld while serving time in prison. The book sparked a furor upon its release. The play, which Ashkenazi wrote, produced and stars in, won him the prize for Best Playwright at the 2014 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, as well as an honorable mention at last year’s FESTEI Theatre Festival in Chisinau, Moldova. Nevertheless, the performance in Ankara was a significant highlight in Ashkenazi’s career, mainly because of the warm reception he received from Turkish theatergoers.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Ashkenazi describes the enormous curiosity about Israel among so many Turks and their eagerness to find out what became of a man they once saw as one of their closest friends. Ashkenazi says they spoke longingly of the strong alliance between Israel and Turkey that Erdogan managed to sever.