I never implied you are comparable to Iran, but this doesn’t mean that a war with Israel would not be very bad for your country. Israel has the baking of the US, so fighting them is not something to be desired.
This happens all the time in geopolitics, but this doesn’t mean you have to reach a point where conflict is on the table. I mean, your interests clashed with the US many times in Syria, yet you are allied with them through NATO.
As far as the Middle East go, the only solution to be a strong country is to be on the same side with Israel. Because if Israel sees you as a threat, it will work against you to destroy you. The Gulf countries seems to have realized this reality, and they are clearly willing to normalize relations with Israel, in order to be safe.
I don’t think there is any bright future as an adversary of Israel.
Well they work with Israel as their short-term interests align and they don't care for long-term interests. They are afraid of their own populations and hence seek outside support. Israeli officials and analysts have been saying for the past 20 years that 'we must attack Iran'. But, since 7th of October as the Netanyahu admin has used Erdogan's posturing to consolidate his own base by disparaging our country and vilifying us, many pieces by diplomats and military analysts have been published in major Israeli papers criticizing this move and emphasizing that Turkey is not Iran and it's not strategically prudent to make an enemy of Turkey this publicly as Israel will not be able to engage Turkey as it has Iran. Therefore U.S. backing or not, the side which will back off from a conflict first is Israel and they know this.
As for the belief that "to be a strong country is to be on the same side with Israel", there are two issues with this view; first one is Saudi Arabia and UAE are anything but strong. Strength is not about gdp per capita numbers or short-term financial prospects. A quote has been widely attributed to Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum which says: "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel".
Also Israel is a maximalist nation dominated by millenarian thinking and radicalizing itself at a rapid pace (for the history of the devlopment of Israeli zeitgeist, you can read about Sparta and how that society evolved); it's a collision course we cannot avoid tbh. It can be diverted and managed with diplomatic prowess however and in this I agree that our admin's emotional populistc antagonizing repsonse should be replaced with containment, diplomatic influence, deception and short-term cooperations in cases where it can hurt us if we don't (like for reasons of F-35 procurement). Unfortunately our current admin has shown its cards and cannot adopt this approach anymore, and some of their base will also not tolerate it so it's mainly an electoral calculation for them; classic case of populism in democracies leading to short-term political gain overriding long-term national interest.
www.middleeasteye.net
