In a stark warning delivered at the Jerusalem-based JNS International Policy Summit on Tuesday, Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister and a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, upended long-standing regional threat framing by declaring that Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the new Syrian government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa pose a far greater danger to Israeli security than Iran.
Chikli argued that the long-feared regional bloc of Iran’s Shiite-led government, Bashar al-Assad’s former Syrian administration and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has reached the end of its operational dominance. In its place, he claimed, a new coordinated “Muslim Brotherhood axis” has emerged, linking Turkey, Syria and Qatar. “It is better to open your eyes now to this shifting threat,” Chikli told the summit audience.
The far-right politician doubled down on his earlier bellicose rhetoric against the new Syrian leadership, which grew out of a former al-Qaeda affiliate that seized control of Damascus in late 2024. “There is no path to peace between Israel and a jihadist regime rooted in the ideology of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, whose core goal is the seizure of unified Jerusalem,” he said. This marks a continuation of Chikli’s prior warnings, in which he labeled the bloc a “radical Sunni axis of evil” that included Pakistan alongside Turkey and Qatar, and predicted an inevitable future war between Israel and Syria.
Chikli’s comments are not an isolated outburst; they reflect a growing hardening of Israeli official rhetoric toward Ankara, amid escalating bilateral tensions between the two regional powers. In recent months, multiple high-profile Israeli politicians across the governing coalition and opposition have moved to classify Turkey as a hostile actor. Earlier this June, fellow Likud lawmaker Ariel Kellner formally labeled Turkey an “enemy state.” Last month, Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar called on the Israeli government to adopt an official enemy designation for Ankara, warning that Turkey would face devastating military damage in any future conflict with Israel. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a leading opposition figure, echoed this framing back in February, arguing that “Turkey is the new Iran.”
The shifting threat assessment also echoes analysis from mainstream Israeli media. In an editorial published the same day as Chikli’s summit address, the major Israeli newspaper Maariv concluded that Turkey now represents a more significant long-term challenge to Israeli national security than Iran. The outlet cited Turkey’s rapidly expanding military capabilities, booming domestic defense industry and growing regional influence across the Middle East as key factors driving this re-evaluation, noting that Israeli security policymakers are increasingly prioritizing Ankara’s growing power alongside long-standing traditional threats from Iran and its former allies.
The remarks come as bilateral tensions between Turkey and Israel have surged in recent weeks. Erdogan himself recently warned that Israeli military strikes in Syria and Lebanon pose a direct national security threat to Turkey, raising fears of an unintended direct confrontation between the two countries.