The election atmosphere that is starting to dominate Israel’s public discourse is having an impact on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the Turkish arena. For a long time he maintained the vow of silence he imposed upon himself, and intentionally avoided referring to any outspoken comments about him or the State of Israel by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now it seems as if Netanyahu has decided that continuing this policy of self-restraint could be perceived as weakness by the electorate, and that it gives his political rivals on the right materials with which to attack him.
Netanyahu initially held back when the Turkish president condemned his participation in the Paris anti-terrorism march Jan. 11, asking, “How can you see this individual who carries out state terrorism by massacring 2,500 people in Gaza waving his hand?” In contrast with Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman quickly reacted to Erdogan’s imagery and demagoguery. Speaking to a gathering of Israeli ambassadors, which took place in Jerusalem on Jan. 14, he called the Turkish president “an anti-Semitic neighborhood bully,” and spoke accusingly of how “the silence of the lambs of cultured Europe, politically correct Europe, toward … Erdogan and his friends, brings us back to the reality of the 1930s.”
