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‘Married to the Mob,’ but under a chuppah: A new memoir details a Jewish family’s crime ties
(New York Jewish Week) — The Geiks weren’t your typical Bronx working-class Jewish family.
One brother ran a mob-protected trucking company in Manhattan’s Garment District. Another brother, an NYPD detective, chauffeured organized crime couriers around the city with illicit cash. Their kid sister visited a Las Vegas casino where the tween was set up with a couple of slot machines in a private room.
And a close family friend was sent up the river for killing a notorious Jewish gangster.
Meet the family whose close ties to Jewish gangsters are chronicled in “Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz,” a memoir just published by Alan Geik.
Dutch Schultz was the mob name of Arthur Flegenheimer, the Jewish bootlegger and numbers racket kingpin who left this mortal coil in October 1935 at the Palace Chop House in Newark. The triggermen were two Jews, members of the organized crime group Murder Inc. Mendy Weiss and Charles “Bug” Workman, the Uncle Charlie of the memoir’s title, did the hit.
Workman, who reportedly killed more than 20 people before pleading guilty to the murder of Dutch Schultz, was not a blood relative of author Alan Geik. But Workman grew up with Geik’s father on the Lower East Side and was so close to the Geik family he was considered an uncle. The author was in his 20s when he first met Workman, after the hitman was released from a New Jersey prison in 1964.
“I would never think of calling him anything but Uncle Charlie,” said Geik, 80, a retired TV producer and radio host who lives in Las Vegas.
In addition to diving deep into Workman’s story, the book also explores how Jewish mobsters and their hangers-on fought antisemitism, beat up Nazis and helped a fledgling Israel acquire arms for its War of Independence.
“These were people, from the first generation of Jews in America, who fought back against antisemitism in the streets,” Geik said. “Their parents fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe. They were not going to let it happen again and they didn’t.”
Geik’s book joins a crowded shelf of histories and memoirs of the Jewish mob, including “But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters,” by Robert A. Rockaway, and “Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams,” by Rich Cohen. Like those books, Geik’s family history provides a sort of reverse image of typical Jewish immigrant stories: Instead of scrapping their way up from New York’s Jewish enclaves into retail and the professions, Geik’s family joined a criminal counterculture.
Alan Geik’s family’s close ties to Jewish gangsters are chronicled in a just-published memoir, “Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz.” (Sonador Publishing)
Books such as Geik’s “really put a personal experience to this whole world that we all know about, the world of New York mobsters,” said Larry Henry, author of a monthly column for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. “The public’s appetite for mob stories is insatiable.”
“Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz” describes a tangled family tree ripe with, well, rotten apples. Geik’s father, Lou, was not actually in the mob but did reap benefits from his ties with organized crime, Alan concedes. Lou Geik was one of several individuals who delivered mob cash to Workman’s family over 23 years.
“Uncle Charlie felt indebted to my father,” said Geik.
The author’s father is cited as a source for many of the anecdotes included in the memoir. Geik said that while his father’s business relied on mob protection, Lou Geik didn’t have “that extra whatever-it-took to be a really hardened criminal” — a trait, he said, his own older brother Bernard also lacked.
“My brother always wanted to be a gangland figure,” said Alan Geik. “So, instead my brother became a policeman.”
An ultimately very corrupt policeman. Bernard Geik joined the force in 1962 and resigned in 1971 after serving in the notorious Special Investigative Unit, which, as depicted in the book and the motion picture “Prince of the City,” devolved into an extortion ring. After resigning from the NYPD, Bernard Geik was arrested for bribery and bribe-taking in 1974. He reportedly pleaded guilty but served no time.
The disgraced detective went to work at his father’s trucking company. According to the author, his brother was one of the detectives provided by a supervisor to drive their Uncle George and other mobsters around town when they were transporting mob money in New York.
Uncle George Gordon was a real uncle. Gordon is allegedly one of the gangsters the actor George Raft modeled himself after for his roles in 1930s and ’40s crime melodramas. For decades, beginning at a casino and speakeasy near the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan, Gordon had a big hand in organized crime’s gambling operations, supervising enterprises in Florida, the Midwest, Las Vegas and Havana.
Alan Geik isn’t the only keeper of his family’s convoluted story. His sister Iris has her own memories of growing up mob-adjacent, such as when she and her parents were Gordon’s guests at the Stardust Hotel in Vegas when the mob was running its casino and skimming cash from the profits. Gordon wanted Lou Geik to work there.
According to Iris, Gordon posted a guard outside a private room in which she had been ensconced with a couple of slot machines. The 13-year-old was “mesmerized” by the slot machines. Her mother was initially unaware of what was going on.
“Uncle Charlie” Workman, seen in 1941, pled guilty to the 1935 murder of mobster Dutch Schultz and was given a life sentence. (NYPD)
“I was having a blast,” Iris Geik said. “I’ll never forget when the door flung open and my itty-bitty mother came in with a big guard behind her. She immediately made me stop [playing with the slot machine] and give back the money I had won.”
Iris Geik, now a privacy lawyer in the Boston area, has written hundreds of pages of her own memoir about the wives and girlfriends of the Jewish gangsters, tentatively titled, “The View From the Women’s Table.”
“Their lives were complex but they were also heimische Jewish women,” she said, using the Yiddish word for cozy and familiar. She and her father eloped because they were a mixed couple: Her mother Reba was a Sephardic Jew and her father was Ashkenazi.
Geik remembered that as a child she noticed a newspaper article about a family friend being arrested. She said, “Mom! Mom! Look, we’re famous.” To which her mother replied, “That’s infamous, dear.”
Geik said that on several occasions her mother observed: “There are no second-generation Jewish mobsters. Jews don’t make gangsters out of their children.”
Reba Geik had been involved in caring for two of Iris’ aunts who lived in Brooklyn while they were dying. Those acts of kindness had a profound impact on Uncle George, the casino supervisor.
After the aunts passed away, Gordon always stood when Reba entered a room, Iris said. “My mother was very honored by that because he was such a big shot.”
Throughout her life, Reba Geik remained close to Sylvia Lorber, a friend from her teenage years. Lorber was the only mob mistress her mother would spend time with, said Iris. Lorber was the paramour of two Jewish gangsters: Benny Kassop, the brother of Murder, Inc. gunman Sammy Kassop, and Sam “Red” Levine, an observant Jew who wore a kippah under his fedora. Levine won the affection of Lorber while the Kassop brothers were in Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison in Ossining, New York.
“Sylvia was a hell of a lot of fun but my mother worried about her,” Iris said. “Sylvia told me her stories, which were kind of glamorous when she was young but sad when she was older.” After spending 20 years with Levine, Lorber couldn’t attend his funeral. Sylvia Lorber stopped talking to Reba Geik in her last years.
Jewish gangsters do, on occasion, display some altruism in Alan Geik’s memoir. Take Moe Dalitz, the head of the Cleveland Syndicate. He was a major bootlegger during Prohibition whose flotillas of illegal liquor on the Great Lakes came to be known as The Little Jewish Navy. His family ran legitimate laundry businesses in Boston and Detroit. Too old to be drafted during World War II, he enlisted at the age of 42 and was commissioned as a lieutenant. Dalitz ran the military laundry service on New York’s Governor’s Island — but declined to bunk in the island’s barracks, opting instead to stay at a swanky hotel overlooking Central Park.
Then there was Johnny Eder, a major source for Geik’s narrative. Eder was part of the Lower East Side teenage crime crew that included Uncle Charlie and Uncle George. As an adult he was a major fence for stolen jewelry and always had a bag of stolen rings on him. Eder also had many connections at City Hall and in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.
According to Geik’s account, Eder was the mob’s representative to the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force in Palestine. Eder arranged meetings in the noisy kitchen of the Copacabana, a mob hangout, between Haganah agents and mobsters and others described as “former wartime U.S. intelligence agents” working to secure weapons for Israel’s War of Independence. (The late Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s longtime mayor, would tell a story about passing cash to an intermediary at the Copacabana, who brought the money to an Irish sea caption with a ship full of munitions bound for the Holy Land. The bagman, according to Kollek, was Frank Sinatra.)
Author Alan Geik’s father-in-law, Lou Lenart, left, and other fighter pilots in front of Avia-S-199 plane. Lenart was part of the group of men transporting surplus fighter planes and other weapons to the Holy Land for use in the War of Independence. (Courtesy of Boaz Dvir)
Alan Geik has a very personal connection to the creation of the Jewish state. His late wife Nina was the daughter of Lou Lenart, a World War II fighter pilot who served in the U.S. Marines. Geik’s memoir details how the elder Lenart was part of the group of men transporting surplus fighter planes and other weapons to Palestine for use in Israel’s War of Independence. Lenart’s story was featured in Nancy Spielberg’s 2014 documentary “Above and Beyond,” about the creation of the Israeli air force.
The story of how Jewish gangsters used some violent muscle against Nazi sympathizers in New York has been told before in historical accounts, but one episode in Geik’s memoir is particularly dramatic. A pair of Jews attended a Bund rally at Camp Siegfried on Long Island, a summer camp that taught Nazi ideology, and were offered a ride back to the city by a Nazi sympathizer who they ended up beating senseless in Brooklyn.
Alan Geik was not really hungry when he met Meyer Lansky at a Central Park hotel in the late 1950s. The gangster asked the 15-year-old nephew of George Gordon if he wanted a pastrami sandwich. Geik declined. Then Lansky, who struck Geik as an “older Jewish man who I knew was really powerful,” suggested that they split one. It was an offer that Geik did not refuse.
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The post ‘Married to the Mob,’ but under a chuppah: A new memoir details a Jewish family’s crime ties appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A View From Inside Iran: Silencing a Generation — Voices Lost to the Gallows
Iranian demonstrators gather in a street during anti-regime protests in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
“Don’t tell Mom.”
It is a sentence that has echoed through Iran’s prisons for decades. A sentence carried through monitored phone lines in the final minutes granted to the political prisoners before execution.
It’s a closing plea made just before the state carries out a sentence from which there is no appeal in practice, regardless of what the law suggests in theory.
Political prisoners are typically permitted one final phone call. The call is brief and the tone measured. A father or a sibling answers. There is no explicit reference to what awaits. The word execution is rarely spoken aloud. Surveillance renders such candor both futile and dangerous.
Instead, there is a restraint.
“Dad … please don’t tell Mom.”
He once imagined a different future. He is a teenager with dreams. Employment. Stability. The ordinary dignity of contributing to his household. A simple life with shared meals, familiar arguments, the slow accumulation of years.
He did not anticipate becoming an example.
In the final hours, time takes on a different texture. Memory becomes intrusive. Childhood surfaces with disorienting clarity. The mind hangs between improbable hope and quiet comprehension. There may be a reprieve. Perhaps international pressure will intervene. Perhaps the sentence will be suspended. Hope flickers irrationally. But the machinery of execution is efficient. The last image is not of ideology. Not of slogans. It is of home.
And then, silence.
Executions function not only as punishment, but as communication. A message sent through prison walls into society: dissent has consequences. Protest has a cost. Silence is safer.
Within Iran’s Revolutionary Courts, outcomes in political cases are determined long before the hearing begins. Access to a lawyer is restricted. Trials may last minutes; in some cases, there are no trials. Charges such as “enmity against God” or “corruption on earth” are applied, enabling capital punishment under a broadly interpreted definition of dissent.
By the time the final call is made, the legal process has typically run its course.
What follows is administrative efficiency.
Hours later, families are notified. The burial conditions are controlled and restricted. Public mourning is not permitted. Grief itself becomes regulated.
The executions of political prisoners in Iran emerge from a judicial architecture that has long blurred the boundary between adjudication and enforcement.
Political cases are typically adjudicated in Revolutionary Courts, institutions established in the aftermath of the 1979 coup d’état to address actions perceived as threats to the state. Over time, their jurisdiction has significantly expanded. Proceedings are conducted behind closed doors. Defendants in national security cases, as defined by the regime, may not be allowed to consult their preferred attorney during the investigative stage, which is a crucial time when coerced confessions are frequently obtained.
Claims of forced confessions, brief trials, and a lack of evidentiary transparency have all been documented by human rights organizations on numerous occasions. The way charges like “enmity against God” (moharebeh) and “corruption on earth” (efsad fel-arz) are phrased leaves room for interpretation. These offenses are punishable by death under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code.
In politically sensitive cases, appeals are reviewed in minutes and without public scrutiny. The interval between sentencing and execution is usually brief, especially during nationwide protests.
The outcome is a system in which capital punishment transcends its role as a criminal penalty and instead operates as a deliberate instrument of state control and intimidation.
The right to a fair and public hearing, access to independent legal counsel, and the exclusion of evidence obtained under duress are guaranteed under international legal standards, notably those set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a member. International Law limits the use of capital punishment, where it has not been abolished, to the most serious crimes, understood to involve deliberate killing. Significant concerns arise regarding proportionality and due process when the death penalty is applied in cases related to protests. In such conditions, the legitimacy of the sentence itself is called into question, and fundamental legal protections are undermined.
Executions in this context serve a dual function: they eliminate the individual and communicate a warning to the broader public. Particularly in the aftermath of protest movements, they operate as instruments of deterrence, reinforcing the cost of dissent.
This is not merely a domestic judicial matter; it is a question of whether procedural form can substitute for substantive justice and whether the language of law can obscure the absence of its protections.
The cases differ in detail, but the structural concerns remain consistent: restricted legal representation, opaque trials, and the rapid advancement of capital sentences.
Time, in such cases, is measured not in months but in days, sometimes hours.
The international community has mechanisms at its disposal. Governments engaged in diplomatic relations with Tehran possess channels through which urgent appeals have been raised, yet these efforts have too often failed to elicit meaning response. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran has repeatedly called for transparency and adherence to international fair trial standards, but such appeals lack effective means to hold authorities inside Iran accountable.
Public pressure matters. Diplomatic engagement matters. Clear and coordinated messaging matters. Silence, too, carries consequences.
In the context of war and ceasefire, the Islamic Republic of Iran has intensified its repressive measures, imprisoning and executing young individuals for the simple act of sharing images and videos with international media. The Internet blackout has severely restricted access to information about detainees and ordinary Iranians.
As the United States and Islamic Republic of Iran prepare to engage in more high-stakes talks in Islamabad, aimed at stabilizing a fragile ceasefire following weeks of conflict, concerns are intensifying that those at risk of execution and ordinary Iranians may face heightened risk under an increasingly vengeful policy of the regime.
For Iranians, the future remains uncertain and unsettling. Rather than offering reassurance, these negotiations are met with anxiety and distrust, as many fear that diplomatic engagement may come at the cost of further repression at home.
Amid pervasive fear and danger, the fate of millions of Iranians remains unknown.
The men and women awaiting execution today are not abstractions. They are sons and daughters who once ended a phone call with the same plea:
“Don’t tell Mom.”
The question now is not only what will happen inside prison walls, but also what will happen outside of them — in foreign ministries, in multilateral institutions, in the public conscience. Because once the sentence is carried out, there is no correction. What Iranians might face now is the aftermath of an unfinished war.
Maddie Ali is based in Iran. In addition to her academic work, she has been involved in civic activity in her hometown, including participating in and helping organize local protests alongside friends and family. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.
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Haftarat Shabbat Rosh Chodesh: All Who Mourn for Jerusalem
An aerial view of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
This year, as Parshat Tazria-Metzora coincides with Shabbat Rosh Chodesh, and the weekly haftara gives way to the closing chapter of the Book of Isaiah, it is impossible to hear Yeshayahu’s stirring words of consolation this season without feeling their weight.
Almost three years have passed since the horrors of October 7th. We have lived through war fought on multiple fronts — in Gaza and Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Homes destroyed across the north, south, and center of Israel. Families cycling through bomb shelters and reserve duty. Non-stop shiva calls. And, as this haftara falls just before Yom Hazikaron, military cemeteries that have grown far too large.
Yeshayahu’s vision of comfort is addressed precisely to this kind of grief — and it places a profound and demanding condition on that comfort.
The prophet paints a future of joy and renewal: Jerusalem rebuilt, her streets once again filled with laughter and light. “Bring Jerusalem joy, exult in her, all of you who love her; celebrate her joy with her, all of you who mourned her” (Isaiah 66:10). The Gemara (Taanit 30b) reads this verse with care and draws out a powerful principle: Only those who have genuinely mourned for Jerusalem will merit sharing in her future joy. The invitation to rejoice in redemption is conditional upon having grieved.
This teaching about who truly “mourns for Jerusalem” carries urgent contemporary weight. A Pew Research Center study released last month found that American favorability toward Israel has dropped eight percentage points in a single year, with 60% of Americans now holding an unfavorable view. More troubling is the trend within the Jewish community: just last year, 73% of American Jewish respondents held a favorable view of Israel. That figure has fallen to 64% — a decline of nearly 10 points in 12 months. For those who love Zion, these are not merely political data points. They are a challenge to the very solidarity that Yeshayahu’s vision demands.
What lies behind this shift? Part of the answer is a well-funded, coordinated campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel and Zionism — visible in American higher education, in the media, and in political lobbying. This must be named and addressed.
But it would be a mistake to look only outward. We in Israel must honestly ask whether the policies and public statements of top Israeli officials have not made it easier to misrepresent Israel as a state unconcerned with minorities, insensitive to other faiths (including Jewish denominations which are not Orthodox), and willing to flatten Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish settlements. The obligation to protect the state is sacred; so too is the obligation to ensure that the vision of an independent, flourishing Jewish State remains one that Jews in Israel and the diaspora can embrace together.
“As a man is consoled by his mother, just so shall I comfort you, and in Jerusalem, you shall be consoled” (v. 13). Yeshayahu’s image of consolation is strikingly intimate — the warmth of a mother, the certainty of belonging. This comfort is not meant to be experienced alone. It is promised to a people that returns to Jerusalem together, whose grief has been communal and whose joy will be shared. Since October 7th, so many Jews worldwide have indeed mourned, prayed, donated, advocated, and made aliyah. That solidarity is real, and must not be taken for granted.
Generations ago, a visitor to the Kotel etched into its ancient stones a verse from this very haftara: “You shall look on, your heart rejoicing, while your bones grow vigorous, like grass, and the hand of the Lord becomes known to His servants” (v. 14). An anonymous hand carved those words of hope into the wall — a private prayer left for all who would come after. This person understood Yeshayahu’s meaning precisely: Our hope is not merely personal. The rejoicing, the vigorous renewal, the recognition of God’s hand in history — all of it belongs to all our people, as one.
As we approach Yom Hazikaron, mourning our fallen with aching hearts, may we recommit to the work of shared solidarity that Yeshayahu demands. May we grieve together, hold one another, and confront with honesty and courage whatever stands between us and the vision of Jerusalem restored. And may we all merit, as a nation, and not merely as individuals, to see that day of consolation soon.
Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander is President and Rosh Yeshiva, Ohr Torah Stone.
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Erdogan’s Turkey Weaponizes Judicial Mechanisms Against Israel
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is welcomed by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha, Qatar, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: Murat Kula/Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS
As the US and Israel are attempting to eradicate the nuclear threat of Iran’s Islamist regime with Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, usual suspect Turkey — a nominal NATO ally of the US — undermines their efforts. Turkey has been a close ally of the Iranian Islamist regime and Hamas’ most vocal supporter on an international level. Ever since Hamas launched a horrific attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Turkey has been opposing Israel. Now Turkey resorts to renewed threats against Israel by weaponizing its judicial mechanisms.
On Apr. 10, the regime-affiliated Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office filed indictments against 35 top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. seeking a total of more than 4,500 years in prison.
The indictments relate to Israel’s Oct. 1, 2025, interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla that was trying to breach the Israeli blockade of Islamist Hamas in Gaza. The indictment seeks aggravated life sentences as well as prison terms ranging from 1,102 years and 9 months to 4,596 years for each suspect on charges, including “crimes against humanity,” “genocide,” “deprivation of liberty,” “torture,” “damage to property,” “qualified looting,” and “obstructing, hijacking or detaining transportation vehicles.”
The supposed investigation is said to unfold within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which Turkey itself has not signed.
Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu did not hold back in his response, accusing Erdogan of massacring Kurds in his own country. “Israel under my leadership will continue to fight Iran’s terror regime and its proxies, unlike Erdogan who accommodates them and massacred his own Kurdish citizens,” he wrote on X. The persecution of the Kurdish population, both inside Turkey and in neighboring countries — Syria and Iraq — by Turkish authorities, has been going on for decades. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry repeated well-known tropes of anti-Israeli propaganda, calling the Israeli premier “the Hitler of our time.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, a vocal critic of Turkey’s aggression, also lashed out at Erdogan on X, calling him a “paper tiger.” “Erdogan, who did not respond to missile fire from Iran into Turkish territory and has proven to be a paper tiger, is now fleeing into the realm of antisemitism and calling for show trials in Turkey against Israel’s political and military leadership,” he said. “What an absurdity. A man of the Muslim Brotherhood, who massacred the Kurds, accuses Israel — defending itself against his Hamas allies — of genocide,” Katz added. “Israel will continue to defend itself with strength and determination — and he would do well to remain silent.”
Israel has established a trilateral cooperation on security, defense, and energy with Greece and Cyprus, two European states that function as Israel’s necessary strategic depth in its greater Islamic neighborhood. In an interview with state-affiliated Anadolu news agency on Apr. 13, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan criticized Greece and Cyprus over their cooperation with Israel, warning it could heighten regional tensions. The Turkish official also claimed that Israel “may seek to characterize Turkey as a new adversary after Iran, as it cannot survive without an enemy.” Greece’s Foreign Ministry replied promptly that it owes no explanations to Turkey over its long-standing alliance with Israel.
Turkish aggressive rhetoric against Israel, Greece, and Cyprus have recurred time after time.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to use military force against all three states. In this context, Israel’s growing cooperation with Greece and Cyprus is essential in lifting Israel out of its Arab surroundings and engaging with a greater Mediterranean and pro-Western security environment.
“Turkey’s latest wave of anti-Israeli rhetoric following the Israel–Greece–Cyprus cooperation mechanisms reflect a familiar pattern rather than a sudden shift. Ankara views the deepening cooperation among these three states as a direct challenge to its regional influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel’s growing strategic relationship with Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean gives Israel an alternative regional anchor that is not dependent on Arab consensus, and it opens pathways for security cooperation that can survive diplomatic storms in the Middle East. For Turkey in particular, the Israel–Greece–Cyprus triangle is a constant reminder that Israel has options, and that attempts to corner Israel politically can push it deeper into partnerships that Turkey cannot easily penetrate,” US national security lawyer, geopolitical analyst, and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Irina Tsukerman, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
The relations of Turkey and Hamas have run deep for decades, and have been thoroughly documented by IPT in various analyses (here and here). Erdogan’s Turkey has an ambiguous relationship with extremist Islamist ideology, having supported the Islamic State and other terrorist Islamist organizations in Syria and Libya. The Turkish government supports the notorious Muslim Brotherhood, designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization. Erdogan himself has repeatedly met with the leadership of Hamas in Turkey.
According to Israel’s Shin Bet, Hamas has established a command post in Turkey which it uses to recruit operatives and oversee operations in the Middle East and specifically in the West Bank against Israel. In September 2023, just weeks before the October 7 assault, Israeli customs authorities seized 16 tons of explosive material sent from Turkey to Gaza, hidden behind packages of construction supplies.
In many instances after the October 7 attack, Turkish Erdogan has lauded Hamas as “a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.” Just weeks after the horrific attack, Erdogan cancelled a planned visit to Israel. Turkey suspended its trade with Israel, closed its airspace to Israeli planes, and issued arrest warrants for 37 Israeli officials, including Netanyahu.
Erdogan has treated Hamas as a sort of bulwark for Turkish interests, claiming in various instances that if the Islamist organization were to be eradicated, then Israel would come for Turkey next. Meanwhile, state-affiliated Turkish media continue to portray Israel as a “number one threat” for Turkey, while they always describe Hamas as a “Palestinian resistance movement.” Even after the October 7 attacks, the Turkish leadership called for an Islamic alliance against Israel, effectively a call to jihad.
IPT Senior Fellow Ioannis E. Kotoulas (Ph.D. in History, Ph.D. in Geopolitics) is Adjunct Lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Athens, Greece. A version of this article was originally published by IPT.