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The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it
(JTA) — While the United States swung its door shut to most refugees during World War II, a young American in France saved thousands, including some of the 20th century’s defining artists and thinkers — such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt — from the Nazis.
The rescue mission of Varian Fry, which went largely unrecognized during his life, is the subject of Netflix’s new drama “Transatlantic,” launching Friday from “Unorthodox” creator Anna Winger.
Starring Cory Michael Smith as Fry, the seven-episode “Transatlantic” aims to recreate his operation in Marseille after the Nazis defeated France and before the United States entered the war. Winger has injected several imagined romances, war efforts and characters into the fictionalized series, including one posed as Fry’s lover, named Thomas Lovegrove (played by Israeli Amit Rahav). Although Fry’s son has said that he was a “closeted homosexual,” no such person is known to have existed.
Winger believes these inventions will invite Netflix viewers to learn more about the true story.
“The people who lived through these stories are dying out,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My job is to bring this to a wide audience, to people who don’t know anything about it.”
The story behind the series
The real Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist and suit-clad Harvard graduate, showed up in Marseille with $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 names in August 1940.
After France surrendered to Germany, Fry was among 200 Americans — including journalists, artists, museum curators, university presidents and Jewish refugees — to create the Emergency Rescue Committee at the Hotel Commodore in New York. This group was concerned with Article 19 in France’s armistice with Germany, which required French authorities to surrender any individuals demanded by the Germans.
The private relief organization drew up frenzied lists of anti-Nazi intellectuals who were trapped in France. With the help of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the ERC obtained some emergency visas and sent Fry to lead the rescue efforts in Marseille, a port city in the southern, unoccupied part of France.
What he found there was impossible to manage alone. His mission began in his room at the Hotel Splendide, where long lines of refugees waited in the morning before he woke up and at night after he went to bed. They sometimes walked straight into his bedroom without knocking, Fry wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after he arrived.
Gathering a small devoted staff, including Frenchmen, refugees and American expatriates, Fry moved his office to Rue Grignan and later Boulevard Garibaldi. Outside of Marseille he rented the Villa Air-Bel — colorfully recreated in “Transatlantic” — to house eminent writers and eccentric Surrealist artists waiting for visas.
The group developed legal and illegal branches, with the cover organization offering humanitarian relief while a behind-the-scenes operation flouted the law to help refugees escape. Using Marseille’s lively black market, the staff found hiding places, forged documents and bribed officials. Bil Spira, a Jewish Austrian-born cartoonist, forged passports for the ERC. (He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, but survived.) Resistance fighters Hans and Lisa Fittko devised an escape route to Spain, guiding refugees across the Pyrenees mountains on foot.
By the time he was forced out in October 1941, Fry’s shoestring operation had enabled 2,000 Jewish and other anti-Nazi refugees to flee Europe, including such towering artists as Chagall, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, and intellects such as Arendt, Heinrich Mann and André Breton. It has been estimated that 20,000 refugees made contact with the rescue center in Marseille.
Fry’s illegal efforts made him plenty of enemies from his own country, who accused him of interfering with American neutrality in the war. He angered the state department, officials at the American consulate in Marseille and ERC members in New York. In August 1941, he was arrested by Vichy police and sent back to New York.
Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59. Only a few months earlier, he had received the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration of merit — and the only official recognition in his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Emergency Rescue Committee merged with another relief organization and became the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It is still in operation today and currently led by a Jewish CEO, former British politician David Miliband.
What’s in the show, and why some are against it
Some of Fry’s colleagues are fictionalized in “Transatlantic,” including the Jewish Berliner Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander), who would become an economist in the United States; the Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs); and the Jewish Austro-Hungarian activist Lisa Fittko (Deleila Piasko). American diplomat Hiram Bigham, who gave Fry crucial help and even hid writer Lion Feuchtwanger in his home, is also a character in the show.
Throughout the seven episodes, rescue missions swirl around a series of fictional love affairs. In addition to Fry’s relationship, a triangle unfolds between Hirschman, Gold and the fictional American Consul Graham Patterson. (There is no evidence that Gold romanced either with her comrade or with any American consul in Marseille.) Lisa Fittko has an affair with the fictional character Paul Kandjo, who organizes armed resistance to Vichy.
Gillian Jacobs as heiress Mary Jayne Gold. (Anika Molnar/Netflix)
Several wartime plot points are also invented, including a prison break at Camp de Mille and Gold’s collaboration with British intelligence.
The degree of fictionalization has angered some people close to the real history. Pierre Sauvage, president of the Varian Fry Institute, called the show’s trailer “shocking.” Born in 1944, Sauvage survived the end of the Holocaust in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, although his Jewish parents were turned down by Fry’s overwhelmed committee. He became close friends with some of Fry’s fellow rescuers in their later years, including the late Gold, Hirschman and Fittko.
“Are there any red lines?” he said. “Can one fictionalize at will, with no concern for the reality of the story, for the false impression that people will get — and for the way it affects the private lives of the families of people portrayed?”
Sheila Isenberg, who documented Fry’s operation in her book “A Hero of Our Own,” has described the series as a “travesty.” Thomas Fischer Weiss, a child survivor who attempted Fry’s escape route through the Pyrenees at 5 years old, also said the historical events needed no embellishment.
“I think you should tell it straight,” he told the JTA.
The legacy of the ‘troublemakers’
Sauvage believes that if Fry and his associates were alive today, they would like to be remembered for their convictions.
“These were people who were sort of in your face,” he said. “People who knew clearly what they felt and expressed it. They would often describe themselves as troublemakers. Mary Jayne [Gold] said about Varian that he was an ‘ornery cuss’ — it took orneriness to stick to your guns.”
That orneriness was critical at a time when many Americans were apathetic to the plight of European Jews — a 1938 poll in Fortune magazine found that fewer than 5% believed the United States should raise its immigration quotas for refugees. By the summer of 1941, it was too late to open the doors. The German policy of expelling Jews had changed into extermination.
According to Sauvage, America’s refusal to accept more refugees had something to do with that shift.
“The Nazis could legitimately come to the conclusion that the world wouldn’t do anything about the murders and wouldn’t really care all that much,” he said. “What the Varian Fry mission symbolizes is people who cared.”
Varian Fry with Miriam Davenport in the first offices of the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseille in 1940. Davenport, a friend of Mary Jayne Gold, also worked in the rescue effort but is omitted from “Transatlantic.” (Varian Fry Institute)
After their year in Marseille, the rescuers settled into more ordinary lives. Hirschman became an economist with appointments at Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Lisa Fittko ended up in Chicago, where she worked hard in import-export, translation and clerical jobs to earn money, eventually joining protests against the Vietnam War. Gold divided her time between New York City and a villa on the French Riviera.
They all remembered the rescue mission as their finest hour. Speaking with Sauvage, Gold called that year “the only one in her life that really mattered.”
A refugee story for troubled times
Fry’s rescue mission inspired Julie Orringer to write “The Flight Portfolio,” a 2019 novel that became the basis for “Transatlantic.” Orringer was captivated by the image of a young man arriving in Marseille, idealistic and unprepared for the depth of anguish he would find.
“The task was way too big,” she told the JTA. “He realized quite early on that he was going to ask for help, that he was going to have to turn to others who had deeper experience. And in collecting this group of incredible individuals around him, he assembled a kind of collective mind that really could make a difference under the very difficult circumstances that he faced.”
She believed that Fry left an example for the inexperienced. “If you‘re the kind of person who wants to take action on behalf of refugees, but doesn’t know how to do it, ask for help,” she said.
Winger, a Jewish Massachusetts native who has lived in Berlin for two decades, conceived of making a series about Fry in 2015. Germany saw an influx of more than a million migrants that year, most of them fleeing Syria’s horrific civil war. She optioned Orringer’s book in 2020.
“I thought a lot about the fact that people like us — artists, Jews, both — had to leave Berlin as refugees, but now there were so many people coming to Berlin as refugees,” said Winger.
Then, just as she started filming “Transatlantic” on location in Marseille, a new war broke out in Europe.
“The war in Ukraine started three days into the production and there was a whole other wave of refugees coming to Berlin,” she said. “Suddenly we were making it in another refugee crisis.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit close to the show, whose cast and crew hail from across the continent. Winger’s cinematographer is married to a Ukrainian woman. In Berlin, she saw thousands of refugees crowding into the central train station, some without shoes, food or plans for shelter.
“I think it gave us all a strong sense of purpose,” said Winger.
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The post The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Why are we so focused on Mamdani — not Nazi-inspired ideas proliferating on the right?
Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy for mayor of New York City has become a matter of national debate — particularly among Jews. Recently, more than 1,000 rabbis across the country signed a letter singling out Mamdani as a threat to Jewish safety under the heading, “Defending the Jewish future.”
If you didn’t know better, you might think that Mamdani had used Nazi rhetoric or used racist or antisemitic language. He hasn’t. He’s only “guilty” of criticizing Israel: The rabbis’ letter references no antisemitic language because, by all appearances, Mamdani has not trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric.
This week marked the seventh anniversary of the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the single bloodiest day for Jews in the history of the United States. The killer justified the slaughter by invoking a conspiracy theory that Jewish groups like HIAS were bringing immigrant “invaders in that kill our people.” The following year, a gunman who killed one synagogue-goer in the town of Poway, California — where a number of my congregants live — penned a similar screed, claiming that “every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race… and every Jew plays his part to enslave the other races around him.”
The contrast between the anniversary of the tragedy of the Tree of Life and the furor about Mamdani has deeply troubled me. Because while many members of our national Jewish community have come to perceive the potential election of a mayor who is critical of Israel as one of the greatest threats to our future in this country, the hate speech that fueled those two killers continues to be not just normalized on the right, but turned into a central element of its political platform.
It is this reality that makes the rabbinic letter about Mamdani heartbreaking. At a moment of increasing threats to the safety of all marginalized communities in this country, my colleagues have targeted the wrong person and the wrong movement.
In a democratic society, the candidacy of a young mayoral candidate who challenges the righteousness of Israeli actions is not a threat to the “Jewish future.” It is an invitation to engage in discussion about those actions.
By contrast, the rise of the “great replacement” theory and its ilk — baseless claims of “white replacement” or “white genocide” — is a threat to the future of all minorities, including Jews. This awful movement, which has led to violence against Jews, immigrants of color, Muslims, and trans people, has found a home in mainstream Republican politics. The Department of Homeland Security increasingly utilizes white supremacist language in recruiting new employees and arresting immigrants including phrases like “report all foreign invaders” and “defend your culture!”
Frighteningly similar language has been used by those who have Jewish blood on their hands.
Ironically, the right’s willingness to indulge in open Jew-hatred has shown up even in arguments about Israel. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently criticized lobbying efforts by AIPAC, invoking classic antisemitism: “I’ll never take 30 shekels,” she wrote on X earlier this month, “I’m America only! And Christ is King!”
At least as troubling is the revelation that Republican operatives regularly engage in racist, sexist and antisemitic discourse, as was recently reported by Politico. These messages illustrate all too clearly the MAGA movement’s descent into bigotry. They include praise of Hitler, white supremacist shorthand, jokes about gas chambers, and one claim that it’s a mistake to “expect… the Jew to be honest.” Together, these messages offer a chilling glimpse into the mindset currently ruling the Republican Party.
Vice-President JD Vance dismissed “pearl clutching” over those texts — a choice in keeping with others made by President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia to the position of White House Special Counsel; Ingrassia was recently revealed to have said he had a “Nazi streak.”(He also said that all of Africa is a “shithole.”) Ingrassia withdrew his name from consideration for that position, but his “punishment” has been to instead remain in his job as White House Liaison to the Department of Justice. Department of Defense spokesperson Kingsley Wilson has posted antisemitic conspiracy theories, featuring references to the “great replacement” theory and the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. She remains in her job as well, as does the most prominent law enforcement official in the nation, FBI Director Kash Patel, who regularly appeared on the podcast of notorious Jew-hater Stew Peters.
Where is the rabbinic outrage about this spate of antisemitism in the highest levels of power in this country?
That rabbis composed and distributed a letter condemning a single candidate for mayor in one city, while too often remaining silent regarding the explicit hate speech that now runs through the Republican party, is embarrassing and shameful. The Trump administration recently scrubbed a report from the Department of Justice website showing that right-wing extremism is far and away the most prevalent threat to marginalized communities in this country. For more than 1,000 rabbis to treat this reality as less serious a threat than Mamdani, in itself, a threat to Jewish safety.
Perhaps our rabbinic colleagues feel it is too dangerous to confront the party in power in this country. Perhaps they are afraid of losing access, or funding, or alienating donors. But Jewish history is replete with examples showing that appeasement of Jew-haters never makes Jews safe.
What has helped cultivate Jewish safety has been the work of solidarity. Building genuine investment in relationships across lines of difference — the kind of relationship-building that Mamdani himself has modeled with Jewish New Yorkers — is the best kind of investment in a secure Jewish future. For the sake of the safety of Jews from Poway to Park Avenue, I pray that my colleagues might begin to understand this.
The post Why are we so focused on Mamdani — not Nazi-inspired ideas proliferating on the right? appeared first on The Forward.
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I won’t vote for Democrats who backed Mamdani. I know I’m not the only one.
(JTA) — There must be consequences when politicians endorse and campaign for unpalatable candidates for public office in order to court that candidate’s political base. I am just one voter, but I am ready to commit to issuing some.
I am a lifelong Democrat and consider myself a centrist liberal on most issues. The last times I recall voting for a Republican were in 1992 — 33 years ago! — when I supported Bill Green in his unsuccessful campaign for reelection as the U.S. representative from New York City’s largely Upper East Side congressional district, and then in 2001 when I voted for Mike Bloomberg for mayor of New York City.
But, like many other centrist Democrats, I have been watching with ever-increasing concern as the party I once considered my political home has moved further and further away to the left — indeed, often to the extremist far-left — on an issue I care about deeply.
The fundamental right of the State of Israel to exist — its geopolitical and moral legitimacy, as it were — is one such pivotal issue. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mario and Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer, and Kirsten Gillibrand all identified and identify as supporters of Israel even while they may have criticized particular policies of one Israeli government or other.
This is not true of Zohran Mamdani. The Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City is a declared and uncompromising anti-Zionist. He comes by his inflexible antagonism toward the Jewish homeland honestly — his father, Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University’s Herbert Lehman professor of government, has demanded for years that Columbia divest its endowment from companies that invest in Israel, and his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, pointedly refuses to attend Israeli film festivals.
Zohran Mamdani considers the likes of the anti-Zionist academics Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi as his intellectual mentors. While at college, he founded the Bowdoin chapter of the radical Students for Justice in Palestine.
All this is known. Mamdani never made a secret of his hatred of — as opposed to disagreement, even harsh disagreement, with — Israel and Zionism. As a result, he engages in some of the most extreme, bordering on the absurd, antisemitic conspiracy theories imaginable. In 2023, we learned this week, he told a far-left group that alleged violence on the part of New York police officers is somehow masterminded by the Israel armed forces: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”
If ever there was a clear incitement to antisemitic violence, violence against Jews, this is it. And yet a host of prominent New York Democrats, rather than distancing themselves from if not affirmatively repudiating Mamdani, have not only endorsed him but are actively campaigning for him.
Among this lot are New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and State Sen. Liz Krueger. All of them purport to be appalled by the surging antisemitism around them, and yet they stand by their candidate.
Mamdani claims not to be antisemitic, only pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, and his above-listed supporters assist him in threading this particular noxious needle.
I’m not the first Jewish voice to say they’re attempting an impossible task. “Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely a rhetorical sleight of hand or political naivete — though it is, to be clear, both of these,” warned Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove in his courageous sermon. “He is doing so to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes, an anti-Zionist rhetoric.”
But I might be the first Jewish voice to say publicly that I will never again cast a vote for any of the Democrats who have endorsed Mamdani. For me, at least, his supporters have crossed a moral and ideological Rubicon, and they have forced me, with not inconsiderable trepidation and reluctance, to do the same.
While Nadler, who announced that he will not seek reelection in 2026, is a lame duck, many of Mamdani’s other acolytes appear to still want to have a political future beyond Nov. 4. I will not countenance that.
Politicians by definition tend to make strategic decisions they deem to be in their self-interest. The more high-minded, not to say ethical, ones among them draw the line when it comes to issues of principle. More likely, or perhaps, more frequently, they will balance competing considerations and opt for what they consider to be their most advantageous pragmatic option.
It’s true that supporting Mamdani may seem like a rational, if not especially ethical, choice. Numerous polls have shown that support for Israel has diminished, especially among younger voters. Thus, the cynical calculation behind some of the Mamdani endorsements may well have been that the future support of such anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian voters would more than make up for any loss of disaffected pro-Israel Democrats like me.
Still, Hochul’s early endorsement of Mamdani’s candidacy could well end up being an albatross around her neck next year when she seeks reelection. Especially if the now prevailing anti-Israel sentiment recedes once the Israel-Hamas war is in the rearview mirror. The same goes for Mamdani’s other cheerleaders. Pendulums have a way of swinging back toward the center.
I, for one, will not vote for Hochul again. And yes, that means that I am open to supporting a palatable Republican nominee for New York governor. It’s not an easy conclusion for me to reach or decision to make, but I don’t see how I can do otherwise — and while I might be the early in declaring it publicly, I hardly think I will be alone.
I am writing in advance of the Tuesday’s election, which I hope may yet turn out to be a surprise, come-from-behind win for Andrew Cuomo. I am also doing so in advance of the inevitable attempts at fence-mending that will follow, regardless of the result.
I know New York’s centrist Democrats will try to win me back, and I know that the forces acting on Republicans may well make a return attractive. But I am making this vow now because I am distressed that while Mamdani’s mainstream allies may not have consciously written off the New York Jewish community, they are hoping for collective short memories on our part. I know, even if they do not, that Jewish security and survival have always depended on remembering.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post I won’t vote for Democrats who backed Mamdani. I know I’m not the only one. appeared first on The Forward.
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Turkey Expands Regional and Global Ambitions, Raising Alarm Bells in Israel
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint statement to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, April 22, 2024. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Pool via REUTERS
Turkey is rapidly expanding its regional and global influence — strengthening ties with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and the Gulf states, while pressing for a role in post-war Gaza — a trend that is raising alarm bells in Israel and the broader region amid shifting Middle East power dynamics.
As part of its push to expand regional influence and strengthen strategic partnerships, Turkey has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Syria, expanding their military cooperation to cover training, advisory support, and access to weapons systems and logistics.
On Thursday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry announced that Syrian armed forces have begun training at Turkish facilities and will also attend the country’s military academies, as both nations seek to deepen their defense ties.
Turkey’s push to expand its ties with Syria comes as the latter is reportedly in the final stages of negotiations with Israel over a security agreement that could establish a joint Israeli–Syrian–American committee to oversee developments along their shared border and uphold the terms of a proposed deal.
Ankara has also been working to establish closer diplomatic and military relations with Israel’s other northern neighbor, Lebanon, at a time when the country stands on the brink of renewed conflict with the Jewish state.
Amid mounting international pressure, the Lebanese government is intensifying efforts to meet the ceasefire deadline to disarm the terrorist group Hezbollah, while trying to avoid plunging the nation into a civil war.
As the Iran-backed terrorist group continues to refuse disarmament, Turkey is leveraging the opportunity to bolster its regional influence and expand its alliances.
Last week, Turkey’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the country’s peacekeeping forces would continue to support the Lebanese army in its mission to restore stability and peace.
“Ongoing efforts will focus on enhancing security in the region, promoting stability, and supporting the development of the Lebanese armed forces, with the goal of fostering and sustaining peace in Lebanon,” Turkish officials announced, following the approval of a two-year extension to their mission in Beirut.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has been openly hostile toward the Jewish state for years – has repeatedly condemned Israeli offensives targeting the Iranian proxy and its terrorist operations in Lebanon.
He has previously said that Israel’s “genocidal” and “expansionist” policies remain the biggest threat to regional peace.
Ankara has also been working to expand its regional influence in the Gaza Strip, which borders Israel to the south, positioning itself to play a pivotal role in post-war developments under the US-backed peace plan.
However, experts warn that Turkey’s growing involvement in the enclave’s reconstruction efforts could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and undermine the fragile ceasefire.
As one of the biggest backers of Hamas, Turkey could potentially shield the Islamist movement in Gaza or even bolster its power, especially as the Palestinian terrorist group continues to reject disarmament — a key element of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
In the past, Ankara has provided refuge to Hamas leaders, granted diplomatic access, and allowed the group to fundraise, recruit, and plan attacks from Turkish territory.
Under Trump’s plan, Turkey has sought to join a multinational task force responsible for overseeing the ceasefire and training local security forces.
Erdogan declared that the country is “ready to provide all kinds of support to Gaza,” and insisted that the Turkish Armed Forces “could serve in a military or civilian capacity as needed.”
However, Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any involvement of Turkish security forces in post-war Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that Turkey’s participation in the International Stabilization Force would be out of the question, labeling it a “red line.”
Gulf states have also raised concerns about Turkish and Qatari involvement in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction and governance efforts.
While the Trump administration has ruled out sending US soldiers into the war-torn enclave, Washington has also considered involving Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Azerbaijan in the international peacekeeping efforts.
US officials have confirmed that any participating countries in the international task force will be selected in close coordination with Israel, ensuring that no foreign troops will be included without Israel’s consent.
Despite Turkey’s efforts to advance its regional ambitions in the enclave and secure a role in post-war Gaza, Erdogan continues to attack Israel while defending the Palestinian terrorist group, as he has repeatedly in the past.
He has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he describes as Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He has even gone so far as to threaten an invasion of the Jewish state and called on the United Nations to use force if Jerusalem fails to halt its military campaign against Hamas.
On Thursday, Erdogan reiterated his anti-Israel rhetoric, targeting Germany for its alleged indifference to what he called Israel’s “genocide, famine, and attacks” in Gaza.
In a joint press conference with his German counterpart, the Turkish leader said that it is the international community’s duty to end what he described as famine and massacres in Gaza.
ERDOĞAN: “HAMAS HAS NO BOMBS – ALL THESE WEAPONS ARE IN ISRAEL’S HANDS”
“Hamas has no bombs, no nuclear weapons. But all these weapons are in Israel’s hands.
And Israel, using these weapons, for example just last night, again struck Gaza with these bombs.
Don’t you see… https://t.co/Z5eDHq1exW pic.twitter.com/LoKHNHUIvC
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 30, 2025
Ankara’s regional ambitions have led the country to expand bilateral ties with Iran, seeking closer cooperation on political, economic, and security matters.
This week, Iranian and Turkish officials pledged to deepen their ties during high-level talks in Tehran — a move likely to raise further alarm bells, given both countries’ longstanding role of supporting Islamist terrorists and their hostile stance toward the West.
In a message to his Turkish counterpart, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stressed the importance of deepening mutual cooperation to strengthen security, development, and stability for both countries and the region.
Ankara has also engaged with Saudi Arabia in an effort to strengthen bilateral ties and secure Riyadh as a regional partner amid shifting power dynamics in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, Turkey’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Emrullah Isler, praised the growing defense cooperation between the two countries, including joint training and other initiatives, amid the signing of new agreements.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia “are key regional actors that share a commitment to peace, stability, and international law,” Isler wrote in a post on X.
“As reaffirmed by both countries during various high-level meetings, we are confident that our military cooperation will continue to grow in terms of both scope and depth,” he continued.
As part of Turkey’s push to expand its influence across the Middle East, Erdogan set out last week on a diplomatic tour to Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman.
During this official tour, he aimed to secure new trade, investment, energy, and defense deals, while also seeking regional support for his proposal to deploy Turkish troops in Gaza.
But Turkey’s efforts to boost its regional influence have also extended beyond the Middle East.
On Thursday, when Erdogan met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, they discussed regional developments and exploring opportunities to strengthen their bilateral cooperation.
At a joint press conference, Merz described Turkey as a key partner for the European Union, noting that Berlin aims to help Ankara expand its relationships with other EU member states.
“I personally, and the German government, see Turkey as a close partner of the European Union. We want to continue smoothing the way to Europe,” the German leader said.