The further rift between the US and Israel is showing again, this time over Turkey. Trump wants to get Turkey back into the F35 program, but this of course goes against Israel’s interest of being the most dominant military power in the Middle East. Trump snapped at Netanyahu, declaring: “Nobody tells me what we should be selling… Turkey’s not a big fan of Israel, not a great fan of Bibi. But they’ve been great for me.”
As we read in Haaretz:
“I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved,” he said. “We know exactly what’s going on. I heard Bibi announce that, I said, ‘Why didn’t you just tell it to me? Why did you have to announce it to the world?’ I know exactly what’s going on at Pickaxe. It’s not a big problem.”
Trump’s irritation was similarly evident aboard Air Force One 24 hours before the meeting, when he was asked about Israel’s vocal opposition to planned U.S. sales of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey.
“Nobody tells me what we should be selling,” he told reporters. “Turkey’s not a big fan of Israel, not a great fan of Bibi. But they’ve been great for me.”
Notice that Trump not only says that Turkey has been “a tremendous ally,” an is “not a big fan of Israel,” but he also praises Turkey for its military presence in Syria. The US wants Turkey to control Syria to keep the Russians out (the whole reason behind toppling Assad was to remove an ally of Russia and Iran). This conflicts with Israel’s interests. Israel has a military presence in Syria’s southwest and wants to remain the dominating power in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Turkey is going through numerous very major phenomena. Firstly, Turkey is pursuing a policy of empire. It cannot be an empire if the IDF is bombing Syria. Turkey is deepening ties with its former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Its being very active in Sudan to extract natural gas and it is also assisting the government against the RSF; it has a very large military presence in Libya where it is working with both of the warring factions; it has a military presence in Somalia and also in Iraq. It is also working with the Iraqi government to establish pipelines, including the Kirkuk to Baniyas pipeline which connects Iraq with Syria. It is also deepening ties in Central Asia that it dreams of connecting to itself as part of a pan-Turkic bloc under Ankara. Secondly, Turkey is facing the cries of the Islamic world to save the Palestinians from the Israeli reign of terror. If Turkey is going to lead the Islamic world as an empire, facing Israel is the elephant in the room to proving itself that is a power worthy of leading the Islamic world. Turkey will inevitably clash with Israel an the US will not save Israel. The US needs Turkey to control Russia’s access from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean on the Turkish Straits, and to be a check against the Russians in the Middle East and in Central Asia. Plus, is the US really going to go to war against the second most armed country in NATO. Israel will be finished.