US Envoy Tom Barrack has downplayed escalating tensions between Turkey and Israel as just "rhetoric" and pushed for regional cooperation between the two countries in security and energy projects.
Speaking during a panel at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Barrack pushed back against comments from some officials in both countries that suggested they could come into conflict in the near future. "I think Turkey is just not a country to be messed with," Barrack said.
Barrack said that both countries were seeing a distorted image of each other as a result of sensationalized media coverage that painted both as expansionist.
"So if you wake up in Tel Aviv, you read the newspaper, what do you see? You see the diagram on the paper of The Ottoman Empire 2.0, which is Vienna to the Maldives, right," he said.
"You wake up in Istanbul and read the paper and it's Greater Israel."
Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize the state of Israel in 1949, and has enjoyed largely cordial security and trade ties throughout most of their modern history.
However, since the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla, when Israeli forces raided a Turkish ship delivering aid to Gaza and killed 10 of those on board, tensions have been strained and the government has increasingly hit out at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
The most recent attempt to restore relations in September 2023 - which saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting and shaking hands for the first time in New York - collapsed the next month after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent genocide in Gaza.
Since then, the rhetoric has escalated from politicians in both countries, with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett describing Turkey as potentially the "next Iran" in March.
The US government has staunchly backed Israel's military actions across the region, including joining its war on Iran. However, Turkey's status as a Nato member and US President Donald Trump's stated admiration for Erdogan has led American officials to seek to restore relations between the two countries.
Barrack told the forum in Antalya that the energy price shocks from the Iran war had proven the importance of regional cooperation to maintain energy security.
"Everything comes from Turkey. It's fiber optics. We're talking about Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is flowing oil, gas, information, data and materials. Where does it go? How does it go?" he said.
"So Israel aligned with Turkey, like Israel aligned with Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia could be aligned with Israel and, for the prosperity of the Israeli people, to me that's the answer."
Some recent rhetoric out of Israeli media:
Barrack added that Israel should go further, and try to engage Turkey as part of the International Stabilisation Force established for Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal signed in September. "The smartest thing that Israel could do is to entice and embrace Turkey to enter that force," he said.
Barrack said that Erdogan's interactions with the Palestinian group Hamas was instrumental for reaching a deal to release Israeli hostages, and that it happened because Ankara didn't designate the group.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also met with Barrack on Monday for what they said was a "productive" meeting.