Turkey is waging a cognitive war against Israel along the lines laid out in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s Communications Strategy.
A genocidal mindset
On September 22, 2026, at the U.N. General Assembly, Erdoğan said Israel shows “a genocidal mindset that will never have its fill of killing.”1 Netanyahu’s name appears nowhere in the speech.2 On October 5, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called Israeli policy in Syria’s Quneitra province expansionist,3 the same word it had used for the Gaza operation in August 2025.4
Ankara has assigned Israel a permanent role, and every new event is read through it. This is a cognitive warfare technique that Ukraine uses systematically and has written into its Foreign Ministry’s official strategy.
Regardless of changes in government
On August 3, 2026, Zelenskyy told Ukraine’s ambassadors that upcoming elections in partner countries, Israel among them, called for outreach to the public, the media, and young people, so that support for Ukraine would survive a change of government.5 The Foreign Ministry’s Communications Strategy for 2026–2030, approved on July 23, defines cognitive warfare as a fight “for human minds,” won by whoever advances their own agenda. The Foreign Ministry sends every central government agency “mandatory communication frameworks.”6
Turkey runs its campaign through a similar hierarchy, with the Presidential Communications Directorate rather than the Foreign Ministry at the top. Around the Directorate operate the Center for Combating Disinformation, the Foreign Ministry, the broadcaster TRT, and the Anadolu Agency. Dor Moriah’s report “Turkey’s Cognitive War Against Israel” (August 2026) identified fourteen cognitive warfare tools that Ukraine and Turkey share.7
The alliance of humanity
Cognitive warfare hands out three roles: hero, victim, and villain. The villain is absolute evil. In the Ukrainian strategy, Russia is always “the aggressor state,”6 to be isolated in every area until “justice is restored,” a condition the document never defines.8
On September 24, 2024, Erdoğan told the U.N.: “Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his network of murder must be stopped by the alliance of humanity.”9 One sentence casts Netanyahu as the villain, Gaza as the victim, and humanity, speaking through Turkey, as the hero. The vocabulary of the Holocaust follows. On September 22, 2026, at the U.N., Erdoğan called Gaza “the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our age.”10 The Jewish state is cast as the Nazis.
A monopoly on truth
In cognitive warfare, one’s own messages count as truth, and the adversary’s are dismissed as propaganda before they are heard. Ukraine declared a “communication boycott” of Russian state media.6 Turkey labels Israeli statements lies. Since October 2024 the Communications Directorate has run an “Israel’s Lies” platform in seven languages, Hebrew among them.11 The system’s main channel is the broadcaster TRT, which works in 41 languages, runs 19 bureaus in 18 countries, including one in Jerusalem, and operates an Arabic channel aimed at the world’s 450 million Arabic speakers.12 TRT contests other newsrooms’ vocabulary as well as their facts. In March 2024 TRT World released a documentary, Game With Words, arguing that Western media say Palestinians “died” rather than “were killed.”13
A communication community
The Ukrainian strategy builds a “communication community” around the embassies. Embassies deliver a “single state signal,” members of the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, receive talking points, and Ukrainians abroad serve as the state’s “ambassadors.” The network works with civil society in partner countries as well as with their governments, and the strategy presents its work with foreign scholars and textbook authors as a guarantee that support will hold “even if political elites in partner countries change.”6
Ankara neither directs nor pays the people who repeat its talking points abroad. The state core consists of TİKA, Turkey’s development agency; Diyanet, the state religious authority; foundations; and the consulate in East Jerusalem. Around it, foreign newsrooms, governments, online commentators, and Israeli politicians repeat the Turkish argument for reasons of their own.7
Perpetual justification
In cognitive warfare the adversary must always be justifying itself. The Ukrainian strategy explicitly sets the goal of keeping the enemy “in a justifying and defensive position” and pursues it through speed. The ministry must answer any surge of posts on social media within 1–5 minutes,6 because whoever tells the story first sets the version, and whoever arrives late is left to refute it.
Turkey drives Israel into the same position by other means. The accusation is built so that any response works for the accuser. If Israel answers that there is no genocide because there is no intent, the dispute moves to intent, and the word “genocide” stays in the question.7 If Israel answers harshly, the answer is declared propaganda. When Israel’s Foreign Ministry called Erdoğan an antisemite on August 29, 2026,14 Ankara compared Israeli agencies to “Goebbels’s propaganda machine” the same day.15 If a third country stands up for Israel, it is declared complicit, as Austria was in 2024.16
The silent accomplice
Since November 2023 Erdoğan has repeated that those who stay silent about Israel’s crimes are as complicit as those who commit them.17,18,19 The Ukrainian strategy does the same by sorting third parties into partners, skeptics to be won over, and supporters of the aggressor whose state media are under boycott.6 Neither framework leaves room for neutrality.
The word “genocide” gives the Turkish version legal weight. Article I of the 1948 Genocide Convention obliges states to prevent genocide,20 and the International Court of Justice held in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia (2007) that the obligation arises once a state learns of a serious risk.21 A state that accepts the Turkish characterization accepts an obligation to act against Israel. A state that rejects it joins the silent.
Its own government’s actions
On August 2, 2026, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said that “Netanyahu’s sole aim is to drive the Palestinians off their land.”22 Until the Knesset election on October 27, this line overlaps with the argument of the Israeli opposition, American officials, and Kyiv.
The Dor Moriah report identifies six Turkish objectives. Five of them, from excluding Israel from regional security arrangements to gaining influence in the Palestinian Authority after Abbas, hold whatever the election result. The sixth reduces the conflict to one government that can be voted out,7 although Fidan said in April 2026 that “some figures in the opposition” also seek to make Turkey an enemy.23
A Dor Moriah and Geocartography Institute survey in August 2026 (1,003 respondents, margin of error plus or minus 3.1 percentage points) found that 28.6 percent blamed their own government’s actions for international pressure on Israel, and 22.9 percent blamed a campaign by Israel’s adversaries.24 The Turkish line fits an explanation many Israelis already hold, so it sounds Israeli.
A historic struggle between good and evil
Ukraine’s strategies provide no channel for dialogue, and the Communications Strategy names “the informational neutralization of the enemy” as the foundation of resilience.6 In practice, neutralization moves in stages: from refuting the adversary’s messages to its sources, then to its institutions, and finally to the idea it stands on. Ukraine has gone through every stage: a boycott of Russian state media, a 2024 law banning religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church,25 and a 2023 decolonization law that removed imperial symbols from Suvorov to Bulgakov.26,27 Moscow took its own path, from “denazification”28 to a “holy war” proclaimed by the World Russian People’s Council.29 The two sides share no future that both would call peace.
Turkey is on the same path. On August 28, 2026, Erdoğan called the conflict “a historic struggle between good and evil,”30 and on September 26 he vowed to unmask “the occupying Zionist mindset” that “considers itself chosen.”31 The declared enemy is now Zionism as an idea. Once the enemy is an idea, compromise with it becomes betrayal, and a war against an existential enemy ends only when that enemy disappears.
A war that cannot end
The vocabulary of a sacred war against evil now reaches beyond politicians. “Genocide” and “expansion” appear in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation communiqué of February 26, 2026,32 and in Diyanet’s Friday sermon of October 9, which urged Muslims to boycott.33 In Turkey the word “genocide” has already moved from speeches into a criminal case against Netanyahu.34 The trouble with cognitive warfare is that it cannot be ended by negotiation. A state that has codified it in official policy is waging a war that ends only with the destruction of one side.
Notes
1. The Times of Israel, September 22, 2026. At UN, Erdogan accuses Israel of genocidal mindset. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/at-un-erdogan-accuses-israel-of-genocidal-mindset-calls-on-world-to-help-rebuild-gaza/
2. Turkish Presidential Communications Directorate, September 22, 2026. Text of Erdoğan’s address to the 81st U.N. General Assembly. https://www.iletisim.gov.tr/turkce/haberler/detay/cumhurbaskanierdogan-birlesmis-milletler-81-genel-kuruluna-hitap-etti
3. Turkish Foreign Ministry, Statement No. 190, October 5, 2026. https://www.mfa.gov.tr/no_-190_-israil-in-suriye-topraklarindaki-ihlalleri-hk.en.mfa
4. Turkish Foreign Ministry, Statement No. 165, August 8, 2025, on the Israeli government’s plan to expand military operations in Gaza. https://bucharest-emb.mfa.gov.tr/Mission/ShowAnnouncement/414380
5. Ukrainska Pravda, August 3, 2026. Zelenskyy calls on diplomats to counter Russian influence ahead of elections in partner countries. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/08/03/8047025/
6. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Communications Strategy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, 2026–2030. https://mfa.gov.ua/storage/app/sites/1/komunikatsiina-strategiya-mzs.pdf
7. Dor Moriah. Turkey’s Cognitive War Against Israel. Report, August 2026.
8. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Public Diplomacy Strategy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, 2026–2030. https://mfa.gov.ua/storage/app/sites/1/strategiya-publichnoi-diplomatii-mzs.pdf
9. Bernama, September 24, 2024. Erdoğan’s address to the 79th U.N. General Assembly. https://bernama.com/en/world/news.php?id=2344127
10. TRT World, September 22, 2026. Erdoğan’s address to the 81st U.N. General Assembly. https://trtworld.com/article/d499ab0ef0ba
11. Daily Sabah, October 2024. Türkiye looks to expose lies of Israel through new platform. https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/turkiye-looks-to-expose-lies-of-israel-through-new-platform/news
12. TRT. Corporate presentation, data as of April 2024. https://abu2024.trt.net.tr/uploads/TRT.pdf
13. Daily Sabah, March 27, 2024. TRT World reveals biased narratives in Western media’s Gaza coverage. https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/trt-world-reveals-biased-narratives-in-western-medias-gaza-coverage/news
14. JNS, August 29, 2026. Israel rebukes Turkish president over antisemitic incitement. https://www.jns.org/news/antisemitism/israel-rebukes-turkish-president-over-antisemitic-incitement
15. A News, August 29, 2026. Türkiye slams Israeli Foreign Ministry’s remarks targeting President Erdoğan. https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2026/08/29/turkiye-slams-israeli-foreign-ministrys-remarks-targeting-president-erdogan
16. TRT World, 2024. Fahrettin Altun’s response to Austria’s criticism. https://www.trtworld.com/article/18212344
17. Justice and Development Party, November 15, 2023. Erdoğan’s address to the parliamentary group. https://akparti.org.tr/en/news/president-erdogan-spoke-at-his-party-s-grand-national-assembly-group-meeting-15-11-2023-14-22-38/
18. Justice and Development Party, July 22, 2025. Erdoğan’s address at the IDEF fair. https://akparti.org.tr/en/news/whoever-remains-silent-in-the-face-of-the-genocide-in-gaza-is-complicit-in-the-crimes-against-humanity-committed-by-israel-22-07-2025-14-48-31/
19. United Nations, September 2025. Erdoğan’s address to the 80th U.N. General Assembly. https://gadebate.un.org/en/node/80217
20. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948, Article I. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf
21. International Court of Justice. Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, Judgment of February 26, 2007, para. 431. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/91
22. Yeni Şafak, August 2, 2026. Türkiye: Netanyahu has no intention of peace. https://en.yenisafak.com/world/turkiye-netanyahu-has-no-intention-of-peace-3721485
23. The Times of Israel, April 13, 2026. Turkish FM: Israel trying to declare Turkey the new enemy after Iran. https://www.timesofisrael.com/turkish-fm-israel-trying-to-declare-turkey-the-new-enemy-after-iran/
24. Dor Moriah and Geocartography Institute. Survey, August 2026, 1,003 respondents, margin of error ±3.1 points.
25. Ukrainska Pravda, August 24, 2024. Zelenskyy signs law on prohibition of Russian-affiliated religious organisations. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/08/24/7471681/
26. Ukrainska Pravda, April 22, 2023. Law on decolonizing place names. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/04/22/7398957/
27. Euromaidan Press, April 23, 2023. Ukraine adopts law that condemns Russian imperial policy and decolonizes toponyms. https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/23/ukraine-adopts-law-that-condemns-russian-imperial-policy-and-decolonizes-toponyms/
28. President of Russia. Address by the President of the Russian Federation, February 24, 2022. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843
29. World Council of Churches. Statement on the decree of the XXV World Russian People’s Council, 2024. https://oikoumene.org/resources/documents/wcc-statement-on-decree-of-xxv-world-russian-peoples-council
30. Yeni Şafak, August 28, 2026. Erdogan calls for Islamic unity against Zionist expansion. https://en.yenisafak.com/turkiye/erdogan-calls-for-islamic-unity-against-zionist-expansion-3722484
31. Sakaryadan Haber, September 26, 2026. Erdoğan: İşgalci Siyonistin maskesini indireceğiz. https://www.sakaryadanhaber.com/haber/erdogan-isgalci-siyonistin-maskesini-indirecegiz-27811397.html
32. United Nations (UNISPAL). Organization of Islamic Cooperation communiqué, February 26, 2026. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/oic-communique-on-israels-announcement-to-expand-colonial-settlements-26feb2026/
33. Diyanet Friday sermon, October 9, 2026. https://www.nukteler.com/diyanet-cuma-hutbesi-9-ekim-2026-insanligin-sinavi-gazze/ 34. The National, August 22, 2026. Turkey seeks Interpol red notice against Netanyahu over Gaza aid flotilla case. https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2026/08/22/turkey-seeks-interpol-red-notice-against-netanyahu-over-gaza-aid-flotilla-case/