A series of nationalist outbursts by Turkey’s main opposition leader has fueled doubts about whether the opposition can relieve the country’s fraught foreign policy as Turkey heads to crucial elections.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently moved to reconcile with Israel and Arab heavyweights after years of hostilities that left Turkey largely isolated in the region. It was against this backdrop that Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the Republican Party (CHP), fired broadsides at Israel and Saudi Arabia on June 26, not mincing his words at Greece as well.

Recalling the deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ferry packed with pro-Palestinian Turkish activists in 2010, the CHP leader tweeted, “Martyring [Turkish] citizens in international waters comes at a price. My message to Israel is that this issue is not closed for us yet.”

He proceeded to rebuke Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was greeted with state honors in Ankara last week. Before the meeting, a Turkish court case over the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was halted and transferred to Riyadh earlier this year. Referring to the crown prince, who is widely believed to have sanctioned the killing, Kilicdaroglu wrote, “Committing a murder on our soil comes at a price as well. We haven’t settled the score with him. He may be twisting Erdogan around his little finger, but Turkey is a great state and he’ll be made to pay the price for what he did.”