June 18, 2021
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can hardly be called friends. Netanyahu’s departure from office June 13 should have been a jubilant moment for Ankara. For the first time an Arab Party, Ra’am, entered an Israeli coalition government, something giving Erdogan an opportunity to congratulate new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
But a diplomatic source from Ankara, speaking on the condition of anonymity the day Bennett was sworn in, told Al-Monitor, “Erdogan will miss Netanyahu. They were enemies with a lot of benefits.”
This claim is counterintuitive and surprising, because whenever the two leaders made headlines when it came to each other in the last decade, they were usually furiously criticizing the other. Why then would Erdogan not be happy about Netanyahu’s departure? We can provide three reasons.