Leveraging long-nurtured Hamas ties, Turkey in the thick of efforts to end Gaza war
By joining the indirect talks in Egypt between Israel and Hamas, Turkey hopes to use its longstanding relationship with the terror group to help end the Gaza war.
Speaking late Tuesday, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Donald Trump had “specifically requested that we meet with Hamas and persuade them” to accept the peace plan the US leader laid out last month.
Erdogan has led this Muslim-majority nation of 86 million inhabitants since 2003 and is known for his Islamic-leaning conservatism. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza — a charge denied by Israel — and has also compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.
He said a Turkish team led by spy chief Ibrahim Kalin would join negotiators in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el Sheikh as they met for a third day seeking to halt the two-year war alongside US and Qatari officials.
Last week, Kalin joined Egyptian and Qatari officials in Doha to discuss Trump’s 20-point peace plan with Hamas negotiators, Qatar said.
While Hamas is blacklisted by Washington, Brussels, and Israel as a terrorist organization, Erdogan has always referred to it as “a liberation movement.” He nurtures close ties with it and frequently hosts its leaders.
A vehicle passes in front of a billboard showing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi at the Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where Israeli and Hamas officials are set to hold indirect talks, October 8, 2025. (AP Photo)
Since 2011, when Ankara helped broker an agreement for the movement to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom it had held captive for five years, Turkey has provided a place of refuge for Hamas officials.
‘Strong support’
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the German Marshall Fund’s Ankara office director, said Erdogan had always offered “strong” support for the group.
He “equated Hamas’ resistance with Turkish resistance [to European powers] during World War I,” he said.
“But right now, there is only one position in Turkey: Israel is committing genocide and it needs to be stopped,” Unluhisarcikli added.
When Hamas staged its deadly October 7, 2023, massacre, media reports said several of its leaders — including the late Ismail Haniyeh — were in Turkey at the time.
According to those reports, Erdogan discreetly asked them to leave as he was trying to rebuild bridges with Israel at the time.
Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages to Gaza during the October 7 rampage, sparking the ongoing war.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 67,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it had killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Smoke rises following an Israeli military strike in the northern Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, October 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
“The fundamental criteria for Turkey are Hamas’s resistance to Israeli occupation and its legitimacy for the Palestinian people,” said Mustafa Yetim, an international relations expert at Osmangazi University in Eskisehir.
According to Talha Ismail Duman, a Middle East researcher at Sakarya University, many Hamas officials have used Turkey as a safe haven in recent decades.
“Some live here and Hamas delegations often come to meet with Turkey’s political and security leaders,” he told AFP.
Over the past 18 months, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan and political bureau member Bassem Naim have both been interviewed by AFP in Istanbul.
Duman said Hamas’s ties with Turkey were “particularly good under (its former chief) Khaled Meshaal” over their shared position on the Arab Spring and the war in Syria.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, shakes hands with then-Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, left, prior to their meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey, August 12, 2015 (AP/Press Presidency Press Service)
Another part of the terror group aligned itself more with Iran and its Hezbollah proxy.
But “the rise of Haniyeh [who took over] in 2017 and that of Yahya Sinwar” — the late Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 onslaught — “progressively reduced Turkey’s influence,” he said.
“Today Hamas has a policy of balancing its ties with Iran and Turkey,” meaning Ankara can leverage its influence over the terror group in its dealings with the White House, he said.
