The outcome of the current Arab-Israeli military conflict remains murky. Turkey has shown active diplomacy by presenting new proposals for a political settlement of the Palestinian issue. What outcome can we expect from Ahmet Davutoglu’s proposal?

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after a month of restraint following the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, definitively sided with the Palestinian cause. Turkey supported Hamas’ aggression against Israel, calling it a just Palestinian struggle caused by the Zionist regime’s apartheid policies.

Turkey is trying to broker a US-Israeli solution to Gaza’s fate

Ankara favours the formation of an independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and with control over one of the holiest sites in the Islamic world, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in accordance with UN Resolution No. 242 of November 22, 1967, What is more, Turkish diplomacy, in line with the national strategy of strengthening Turkey’s global status, has proposed an international mandate as guarantor of Palestinian security.

Of course, such a prospect does not suit Israel and its strategic ally the US. After all, if it did, then Palestine would have acquired the status of an independent state in the nearly 60 years since the 1967 UN resolution. Tel Aviv does not want Israel, already a small state, to be further diminished by granting Palestine with control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and part of Jerusalem. The Jews believe that the grouping of 22 Arab states against little Israel is unjust, appeal to the history of two thousand years ago, and, most importantly, place their hopes in the strength and determined support of the Western countries led by the US and the global Jewish Diaspora.

Israel’s response to Turkey’s reasonable diplomatic proposals was a brutal war with large-scale destruction of the entire social infrastructure of the Gaza Strip and significant physical losses including the deaths of some 47,000 Palestinians. Israel’s intelligence services and the Israel Defense Forces, with US support, have launched crushing strikes against pro-Palestinian forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

Moreover, the Gaza Strip in southern Israel has direct access to the coastal zone of the Mediterranean Sea. Accordingly, its port facilities are of high strategic interest to Israel’s economy and logistics infrastructure and could form part of international transportation corridors from Asia to Europe. As a result, there is no chance of the Israeli leadership being sympathetic to the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel, by choosing to wage a brutal and destructive war, is pursuing the goal of ethnically cleansing the region of Palestinians under the guise of fighting Hamas, which it calls a terrorist organization. Tel Aviv is not going to rebuild Gaza’s social infrastructure for Palestinian Arabs to live in, and is putting targeted pressure on the new administration of US President Donald Trump to gain support for organizing the deportation of Palestinians to Arab, Islamic and non-Islamic countries.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has repeatedly asked countries that have condemned the Jewish state for atrocities (aggression and even genocide) to accept 2 million Palestinians from Gaza. Tel Aviv has addressed such appeals to Turkey, Ireland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Canada and other countries.

However, the very idea of ethnic deportation under the guise of devastating Gaza’s economy is rejected both by the Palestinians and most of the world. The exceptions to this list are Israel and the US, while the UK has remained silent. Donald Trump, perfectly understanding the political motivation of Israel, has turned this illegal idea into a business proposal (he presents Gaza as a large piece of real estate, which the war has made unsuitable for Palestinians to live in, and which will take a long time to be rebuilt and turned into a zone of stability, with the United States participating in and controlling this process).

The United States is asking Indonesia, Jordan, Egypt and other Islamic countries to host Palestinian refugees from Gaza, otherwise it threatens to cut their economic and political support. What is that if not blackmail? It turns out that might makes right.

Turkey cannot ignore such a public statement by the American leader. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, before traveling to Malaysia, called Trump’s Gaza plan unacceptable and the result of Zionist pressure. Turkey rules out any attempt to “ethnically cleanse” Gaza and deprive the Palestinians of their centuries-old historical homeland.

Meanwhile, in response to Donald Trump’s idea of deporting Palestinians, on February 12, Turkey’s former foreign minister and former prime minister, the chief strategist of neo-Ottomanism Ahmet Davutoglu stated from the rostrum of the Turkish parliament that “as a Turk from the Ottoman subjects, I say this: the last legitimate state of the Gazans was the Ottoman Empire” and proposed that “the Gazans hold a referendum and, until the Palestinian state is established, let them be connected to Türkiye as an autonomous region.”

This statement by a Turkish politician brings a new element to the unclear prospects for the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The possible prospect of a military escalation between Turkey and Israel

Naturally, Ahmet Davutoglu is neither the president nor even the foreign minister of Turkey. The above statement does not represent the official opinion of Ankara. But how is Davutoglu going to hold a referendum in the devastated Gaza Strip while the residents are in the crosshairs of the Israel Defense Forces? Benjamin Netanyahu again threatens Hamas that he will resume hostilities in the event of unacceptable violations of the ceasefire. If the hostage issue can detonate another escalation, what might an attempted referendum in favour of Turkey lead to?

If the Turkish army were to enter Gaza and take control of it, the Turks could then guarantee both the holding of the referendum and an acceptable decision. Turkey, on the other hand, has limited itself to diplomatic rhetoric.

Meanwhile, given the Turkish experience of more than 50 years ago when it conducted an amphibious invasion of Northern Cyprus (Operation Attila, July 1974), it is theoretically possible that the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces is capable of conducting a similar operation against Israel and making Erdogan’s verbal threats of a “night invasion” a reality in the Gaza Strip. But in history, all comparisons and parallels are, at best, of doubtful value.

Israel in 2025 is a far cry from the Cyprus and Greece of 1974, and for Turkey any plans to invade the Gaza Strip could have the unfortunate consequence of significant territories in the southeast, northeast and west of the Turkey being alienated, and, with US support, the Kurdish, Armenian and Greek communities would see their position strengthened. Israel has a sufficiently powerful arsenal to disrupt the Turkish General Staff’s plans, and would have strong US and UK military support in doing so.

Finally, even if one imagines the possibility of holding a referendum in Gaza and turning it into an autonomous region within Turkey, how could the Palestinians trust the Turks about their readiness to create an independent Palestine, given Turkey’s genocide and deportation of the Armenians and the current aggression against the Kurds.

Davutoglu is the author of the doctrine of neo-Ottomanism, not neo-democracy. Turkey considers both Palestine and Syria as parts of the former Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish political elite still feels a certain nostalgia for the country’s former status as an imperial power. If Turkey cares so much about Palestine and the Gaza Strip in particular, why did it not provide military support to the Arabs in the recent war, following the example of Iran?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has positioned himself as a major political figure who can reach any height in international diplomacy. Of course, Turkey’s just support for Palestinians against the policies of apartheid and genocide is certainly deserving of respect. However, Ankara’s attempts to escalate military tensions in the Middle East with an epicenter in Gaza and Syria could lead to the quite opposite results from those anticipated and destabilization in Turkey itself.

Alexander Svarants—Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/03/01/turkey-puts-forward-another-independent-palestine-proposal/