Former prime minister warns ‘Turkey is the new Iran’

Bennett said the growing influence in Syria, Gaza and other areas is steadily tightening pressure on Israel.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned Tuesday that Turkey is becoming a central strategic challenge for Israel, urging unified Zionist leadership and political change following what he described as the gravest failure in the country’s history.

Addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Bennett said Israel is facing a shifting regional landscape in which Ankara is assuming a role once associated with Tehran.

“A new Turkish threat is emerging,” he said, declaring that “Turkey is the new Iran.”

Bennett said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents a calculated and expanding danger to Israel’s security.

He described Erdogan as “a sophisticated and dangerous adversary who seeks to encircle Israel,” warning that Ankara is working to expand its reach across several fronts near Israel’s borders.

He accused Turkey and Qatar of jointly backing Islamist movements across the region, saying the two states are “nourishing an Islamic Brotherhood monster that eventually might be as dangerous as the one created by Iran.”

Bennett said their growing influence in Syria, Gaza and other areas is steadily tightening pressure on Israel, creating what he characterized as a strategic encirclement.

He said Turkey and Qatar are “surrounding us with a new choke ring.”

Bennett also warned that Turkey is attempting to undermine Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia while advancing a broader regional alignment hostile to Israel. He said Ankara is seeking to form a Sunni axis that would include Pakistan, which he described as nuclear armed. “We must act, in different ways but simultaneously, against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility of Ankara,” he said.

Turning to Israel’s internal situation, Bennett said national cohesion is critical to the country’s survival. “I tell you today: A divided Israel will not survive,” he said. He argued that Israel’s current leadership has deepened internal fractures, saying it “has divided us and continues to divide us even now, more than ever.”

Bennett called for broad Zionist unity, saying, “What we need above all is Zionist unity.”

He also delivered a sharp critique of Israel’s political leadership, saying accountability is necessary after the country’s most devastating crisis. “Three decades after rising to power, and after the greatest disaster in Israel’s history occurred on his watch, a leader must know when to step down with dignity,” he said, adding, “Israel is greater than any one person.”

Bennett said the country’s future depends on political renewal. “The next chapter must be written by a new leadership, without the same people responsible for the disaster,” he said.