Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yisrael Katz launched an unusual dual provocation against Turkey on the evening of April 11, targeting both the government and opposition in what analyst Murat Yetkin, writing for YetkinReport, describes as a display of frustration over a series of collapsed strategic calculations in the region.
The provocations came shortly after it became clear that the first round of US-Iran talks in Pakistan had yielded no result. Netanyahu posted a message on X reading: "Israel, under my leadership, will continue to fight Iran's terror regime and its proxies — while Erdoğan helps them and massacres his own Kurdish citizens."
Yetkin argues the statement was in fact directed at US President Donald Trump rather than a Turkish audience — a dual message signalling that Israel would press on with its military campaign regardless of any US-Iran diplomatic progress, while simultaneously lodging a complaint against Erdoğan with a president who has otherwise treated Turkey's leader as a distinct partner within NATO.
Roughly ninety minutes later, Defence Minister Katz followed up with a message posted in Turkish, tagging not only President Erdoğan but also opposition figures Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Ekrem İmamoğlu, and Mansur Yavaş — an apparent and clumsy bid, Yetkin notes, to drive a wedge between the Turkish government and its domestic rivals. The gambit backfired. CHP leader Özgür Özel responded that "Turkey stands united, on the side of the innocent, against Israel."
According to Yetkin's analysis in YetkinReport, the outburst reveals a string of Israeli miscalculations. Israel had apparently expected Turkey to retaliate militarily after Iranian missiles were fired toward Turkish territory — as it had hoped Gulf Arab states would respond to Iranian strikes — thereby drawing Ankara into the conflict against Tehran. That expectation went unfulfilled. Israel was also reportedly discomfited by Turkey's long-running behind-the-scenes efforts through its intelligence agency MIT to prevent Hamas from launching attacks that could trigger further escalation, as well as by the emerging prospect of a political resolution to the Kurdish question under the Turkish parliament's roof following the PKK's announced disarmament process.
More broadly, Yetkin points to the collapse of two interlinked Israeli strategic projects: the plan to establish a PKK-controlled Kurdish state in Syria that would keep Turkey, Iran, and Iraq permanently destabilised, and the plan to deploy armed Kurdish groups inside Iran as a proxy force against Tehran — both of which were frustrated, in part through Turkish diplomatic pressure.
"When their plans failed in Syria, and when the plan to use armed Kurdish organisations against Iran also fell through, they clearly became very angry," Yetkin writes.
The YetkinReport analysis concludes with a broader observation: Israel's frustration inadvertently underscores the strategic value of Turkey resolving its internal Kurdish conflict. A Turkey free of the PKK insurgency, Yetkin argues, is a Turkey harder for its adversaries to manipulate — and that internal political polarisation between government and opposition only "whets the appetite" of those who wish Turkey harm.