Ragip Soylu

Turkey Bureau Chief

After launching a genocidal war on Gaza, devastating large swathes of southern Lebanon, occupying Syria and launching two rounds of war with Iran, Netanyahu still faces a fundamental problem: many Israelis don’t believe they’re any safer.

Recent polling suggests a majority of Israelis are dissatisfied with the current situation with Iran and are unconvinced that the ceasefire serves Israel’s long-term interests.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is pushing for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, yet many Israelis living in the north – traditionally a Likud stronghold – oppose the idea.

According to a new poll, Netanyahu’s support is falling sharply in the region, with northern voters abandoning Likud faster than voters elsewhere and assigning him greater responsibility for the Lebanon war.

For years, Netanyahu’s central political promise was simple: only he could guarantee Israel’s security.

Yet repeated reports have suggested that intelligence failures under his leadership contributed to the 7 October attack. Since then, he has led Israel into a state of near-permanent war across multiple fronts.

At times, that strategy appeared to strengthen his position.

The pager and walkie-talkie attacks targeting Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon in late 2024, followed by a broader campaign of assassinations against senior Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian figures, projected an image of operational dominance.

Those operations also killed large numbers of civilians, including women and children, but they did little to dent Netanyahu’s standing. If anything, support for his leadership grew.

Now, however, the picture looks different.

Hezbollah, despite repeated claims that it had been crippled, remains capable of inflicting damage on Israeli forces and has reportedly deployed increasingly sophisticated capabilities, including fibre-optic drones.

Hamas, despite the killing of successive military leaders, remains intact.

And the war with Iran failed to achieve Netanyahu’s most ambitious objectives.

Iran’s nuclear programme remains intact. Its regional proxies have survived. And the Islamic Republic is now asserting control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

When leaders fail, they often search for a scapegoat.

For parts of the Israeli media, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become the main target.

Retired Major General Tamir Hayman, the former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate and a senior figure during the war on Iran, recently argued that Erdogan was responsible for blocking a US- and Israeli-backed Kurdish uprising inside Iran.

Asked why the plan failed, Hayman claimed that the operation’s success depended on a Kurdish offensive and that Erdogan, viewing Kurdish nationalism as a strategic threat, persuaded Trump not to support the creation of a Kurdish state.

“Because the centre piece of the whole sequence should have started with the Kurdish invasion. According to what was published, Erdogan, who views the Kurds as a strategic threat to Turkey’s stability, convinced Trump that it was a bad idea to give the Kurds a state,” Hayman told the US network PBS.

“Backing the Kurds goes against Turkey’s interests, and I think that had something to do with Trump’s decision to cancel the operation.”

Further Israeli media reports alleged that Mossad, working alongside the CIA, had been involved in efforts to arm Kurdish groups with weapons captured during conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.

“Under the plan, the Kurds received financial assistance and vehicles, and were armed with small arms, anti-tank launchers, grenades and mortar bombs,” a Times of Israel report said.

“The Mossad was responsible for delivering the weapons and ammunition to the Kurds, the reports say.”

Once again, Erdogan was portrayed as the man who derailed the effort.

The Jerusalem Post went even further, claiming that US Vice President JD Vance leaked the operational details to Erdogan to undermine the operation.

The appeal of this narrative is obvious.

Erdogan’s anti-Netanyahu rhetoric plays poorly with Israeli public opinion, making him a politically convenient villain. Blaming Turkey carries little domestic risk while distracting attention from Netanyahu’s own strategic failures.

It is true that Turkey conveyed its opposition to the plan through several channels. But was Erdogan alone responsible? Definitely not.

We know that senior Trump aides were highly skeptical of Netanyahu’s regime-change presentation at the White House, including the notion that Kurdish forces could mount a ground invasion of Iran.

CIA director John Ratcliffe reportedly used one word to describe Netanyahu’s regime-change scenarios: “farcical.”

“In other words, it’s bullshit,” Rubio said.

As the plan took shape and the Trump administration began testing the waters, Iraqi Kurdish actors also found themselves in a difficult position.

Even though the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) – the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan, led by the Barzani family – had a sister organisation in Iran, the PDKI, which was reportedly the leading force in the effort, they had little reason to trust Washington after what had happened to the Kurds in Syria.

Kurdish sources told me the plan also envisioned the Peshmerga joining the uprising, since Washington did not trust the PDKI’s capabilities. Erbil, however, was not enthusiastic. And there was an obvious question: if Iran survived the war, who would pay the price for that hostility? As it turned out, Tehran did survive.

But the problem went even deeper.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by the Talabani family and a key partner in the Kurdistan Region’s governing coalition, has long maintained strong relations with Iran. At the same time, it was seeking to improve relations with Ankara. Supporting such an operation risked damaging both objectives.

PJAK, the Iranian affiliate of the PKK and arguably the most capable Kurdish armed group that could have participated, had little incentive to join either. It has largely observed a ceasefire with Tehran since 2011, while the PKK itself has been engaged in a political process with Turkey aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement.

In other words, the story is far more complicated than the version now circulating in parts of the Israeli media.

Every major actor involved had reasons to reject the plan. Turkey was one factor among many, not the decisive one.

But the verdict remains the same for Netanyahu: his three-year campaign of violence and destruction failed to change the regional status quo.

Iran’s leadership remains in power. Its nuclear programme survives. Its allies endure.

Domestically, despite everything that has happened since 7 October, many Israelis still don’t feel secure. For Netanyahu, that may be the most damaging verdict of all.

Worth mentioning

• Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, visited Turkey on Monday and met with Erdogan. One of the main topics of discussion was opening the Venezuelan market to Turkish petroleum investment in the oil sector. Read the story here.
• Trump has told his Turkish counterpart that he plans to attend the NATO summit in Ankara in July. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio later confirmed MEE’s reporting, saying that Trump and other senior officials will be there. European officials have described the summit as the most important gathering in the alliance’s recent history. Read the story here.
• Israel needs to abandon its consulate building in Istanbul because it failed an earthquake resilience test. Tel Aviv must now spend $6m to relocate to a new site, though many in Israel believe it should stay put, given that no Israeli diplomat has worked in Turkey since late 2023.