Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is again making overtures to Israel and reportedly has invited Israel’s president Isaac Herzog for an official visit to Ankara according to his own spokesmen and foreign media.

The reports about Erdogan’s invitation couldn’t be verified though and the same is true for the report by Erdogan’s office about Hamas leaders being deported from Turkey.

Herzog has been the only Israeli leader who has a pretty good relationship with the Turkish leader and has spoken with him three times over the phone since he became President of Israel.

The deportation of the Hamas brass from Turkey had been an important precondition of the Israeli government for repairing relations with the autocratic regime in Ankara.

Channel 12 in Israel reported this week that Turkey was willing to reduce the presence of Hamas leaders and members in the country but couldn’t find an Israeli official who was willing to confirm the report.

There’s indeed not a shred of evidence that Erdogan is now suddenly willing to end Hamas’ presence in Turkey while Israel says that it can’t confirm the report.

Since Turkey has been robbed of its independent press since the botched coup attempt in the summer of 2016 it seems that Erdogan is trying to get his narrative over improving relations with Israel out via his own office and foreign media.

The Turkish state-controlled media, meanwhile, stay mum about improving relations with Israel and the end of Hamas’ presence in Turkey.

This is something that can be explained by taking a look at the incitement campaign against the Jewish state that has brainwashed the masses in Turkey.

Erdogan has constantly incited the masses in Turkey over Israel since the first Gaza war at the end of 2008. He also repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany over its actions against the Palestinian Arabs.

The incitement increased after the incident with the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara that was banned from entering Israel’s territorial waters on May 31, 2010.

Nine Turks were killed and ten Israeli naval commandos of the Sayeret 13 Special Forces unit were wounded, one seriously, during the violence on the ship after the commandos boarded the vessel.

The violence started when activists of the Islamist Turkish organization IHH, which is aligned to Erdogan’s AKP party, used iron rods and knives in an attempt to prevent the Israeli soldiers from boarding the vessel.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was later forced by then US President Barack Obama to apologize to Erdogan and to pay compensation to the families of the Turkish IHH terrorists.

After that, Turkey and Israel renewed diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors in 2016.

However, in 2018 Turkey again severed ties with Israel and recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

This happened after the US opened an embassy in Jerusalem and after Israel killed a number of Palestinian Arabs during the violent weekly ‘Great March of Return along the Israeli border in Gaza.

At the same time, Israel’s Ambassador Eitan Na’eh was expelled from Turkey and had to undergo an embarrassing on-camera security check at Istanbul National Airport before he boarded a plane.

Camera crews of the Turkish media were invited by Erdogan to cover Na’eh’s departure from Turkey and filmed him while he had to remove his shoes and his jacket.

The move was clearly made to humiliate Israel and to show that Turkey considers itself superior to the Jewish state.

Israel then subsequently summoned Turkey’s no.2 diplomat in Israel and asked him to present his identification upon entering the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

Erdogan’s response was the expulsion of Yosef Levi Sfari, the Israeli consul in Istanbul after which Israel did the same with Hüsnü Gürcab Türkoĝlu Turkey’s consul in Jerusalem.

That was the beginning of a period in which Erdogan upped his rhetoric against Israel and began to increase Turkey’s involvement in Arab Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount complex where today the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located.

Erdogan later again ranted against Israel during a speech at the opening session of the Turkish parliament in the fall of 2019.

He spent much of his speech bashing Israel calling Jerusalem “our city”. He also claimed that the Palestinian Arabs had lived in “Palestine” for “thousands of years” calling them “an oppressed people”.

By claiming Jerusalem was actually a Turkish city, Erdogan meant that because the Turks occupied what is now Israel during the 400 years that the Ottoman Empire existed the Turks still have a claim on the capital of Israel.

The Turkish leader and Netanyahu repeatedly traded barbs during this period and relations between Israel and Turkey hit an all-time low.

The only relations that didn’t hit a snag were the economic ones with trade between the two countries continuing to grow and Turkey using the port of Haifa as a transit point for delivering goods to both Iraq and Jordan.

Economic considerations as well as Turkey’s increasing isolation in the region are most likely behind Erdogan’s surprising overtures toward Israel.

Turkey’s economy is in free fall with consumer prices rising with a staggering 36 percent in December up from 21.3 percent in November 2021.

At the same time, electricity prices skyrocketed with households now paying fifty percent more for a kilowatt since the beginning of 2022.

Prices of natural gas also exploded since the beginning of January. Consumers were suddenly confronted with a 25 percent price hike for natural gas and industries with a rise of even 50 percent. Inflation was above thirty percent last year, Turkish media reported this past weekend

As a result only 4 percent of the Turks now say they can make ends meet and are able to pay for their basic needs.

Among supporters of Erdogan’s AKP party things are a bit better but only 6.3 percent of the dictator’s supporters, say they can pay for all their basic needs.

Erdogan didn’t like that his mouthpieces published data over the staggering inflation and threatened to punish them for publishing “harmful content”.

Another possible reason for Erdogan’s attempts to reach out to Israel is Turkey’s increasing isolation in the region and the world at large.

After the US pulled its support for a joint Israeli, Greek and Cypriot project that would have constructed a gas pipeline to Europe, Erdogan apparently saw an opportunity to drive a wig in the newfound coalition of the three Mediterranean countries and suddenly showed renewed interest in official relations with Israel.

Turkey’s isolation in the Middle East has become a major problem for Erdogan, who also is at loggerheads with the European Union and the United States.

The Turkish dictator saw how Arab countries decided to make peace with Israel and how they now benefit from Israel’s state-of-art high-tech industry and other advanced Israeli technology including sophisticated weaponry.

This was probably the reason why Erdogan invited UAE leader Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan who paid a visit to Turkey Wednesday last week. The two leaders spoke about investment in Turkey by the United Arab Emirates and regional issues. The visit was also meant to improve ties between Turkey and the Gulf state and had, without any doubt, also to do with Erdogan’s reduced influence in The Middle East

The Bennett-Lapid government, from its side, is reluctant to renew diplomatic ties with Turkey as long as Erdogan is its leader.

This also explains why there has not been a formal Israeli response to Erdogan’s invitation to President Herzog.

The Israeli government apparently waits for Erdogan’s actions toward the Jewish state and is suspicious about his conciliatory statements while making the impression that it first wants to see that the Turkish strongman will indeed expel Hamas’ members from Turkey, including arch-terrorist Saleh al-Arouri.

Arouri founded Izz-a-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of the Islamist terror movement, and was later involved in Hamas’ reconciliation with Iran that led to the opening of a new front with Israel in southern Lebanon by Hamas.

The dangerous Hamas leader is spending his time commuting between Qatar, Turkey, and Lebanon. A 2016 agreement between Turkey and Israel should have banned al-Arouri from entering Turkey again, something that apparently didn’t happen.