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‘There was no time to sleep’: 4 Jews reflect on a year of helping Ukrainians at war
(JTA) — In the months after Russian tanks rolled into her country last February, the music largely stopped for Elizaveta Sherstuk.
The founder of a Jewish choral ensemble called Aviv in her hometown of Sumy, in the northeastern flank of Ukraine, Sherstuk had to put singing aside in favor of her day job and personal mission: delivering aid to Jews in Sumy.
“There was no time to sleep,” Sherstuk recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently. “All my team members worked the same, 24/7.”
A year later, Sherstuk is still hustling as the Sumy director of Hesed, a network of welfare centers serving needy Jews in the former Soviet bloc. But she has also begun teaching music classes again, too — with performances sometimes held in bomb shelters.
Catch up on all of JTA’s Ukraine war coverage from the last year here.
Sherstuk’s story reflects the ways that Russia’s war on Ukraine has affected Jews in Ukraine and beyond. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands, left even more in peril and fundamentally altered the landscape and population of Ukraine, forcing millions to flee as refugees.
But the war has also mobilized the networks of Jewish aid and welfare groups across Europe, leading to a Jewish organizational response on a massive scale not seen in decades. And Ukrainian Jews who have remained in the country have recalibrated their lives and communities for wartime.
Here are four stories about Jews who stepped in and stepped up to help, and a taste of the on-the-ground situations they found themselves in.
‘I was needed there’
Enrique Ginzburg, second from right, is shown with Ukrainian doctors in Lviv. (Courtesy of Ginzburg)
Since nearly drowning at 23, Dr. Enrique Ginzburg has felt he “had to pay back” for the extra years of life he was granted.
Now 65, the professor of surgery at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine and its trauma division has lent his critical care expertise in Haiti, Argentina, Kurdistan and Iraq, in various emergency situations. But until last year, he had never been to a war zone.
The Cuba native felt drawn to Ukraine because his grandfather is from Kyiv, while his grandmother is from nearby eastern Poland. So early on in the conflict, he called Dr. Aaron Epstein, an old friend and the founder of the nonprofit Global Surgical and Medical Supply Group.
“Get yourself a flak jacket, a helmet, a gas mask and come on over,” Ginzburg said Epstein told him.
He has been to Ukraine twice under the nonprofit’s auspices, last April and July. Ginzburg’s explanation for why he flew across the world to put himself in danger: “I was needed,” he said.
His base was an emergency hospital in Lviv, a city located west enough that it became a major refugee hub. He consulted with front-line Ukrainian physicians, many of them young and inexperienced, and hospital administrators, watching the doctors in action. He also visited patients in hospital wards and helped to treat gunshot wounds and assorted combat injuries.
Ginzburg’s bags were packed with meaningful supplies. Some had been requested by his Ukrainian colleagues for medical use, mostly specialized catheters. But he also brought tefillin, the phylacteries used by Jews in their morning prayers. Ginzburg, who studied in a yeshiva while young but no longer considers himself Orthodox, wrapped them every day while in Ukraine.
Even though Lviv was far from the fighting, he could hear air raid sirens and the explosion of the Russian missiles, sometimes feeling the earth shake. When intelligence reports warned Ginzburg’s medical team of impending missile attacks, they sought refuge in safe houses.
“Today,” he told the Miami Herald last June, “I was calling my life insurance [company] because I have young sons and my wife, so I’m trying to make sure I have good coverage.”
By the end of his trips, Ginzburg lost count of the number of doctors he helped train and the number of patients he saw. “I’m sure it’s hundreds.” He plans to make a third trip sometime this year.
‘This is our new reality’
Karina Sokolowska is the director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s activities in Poland. (Courtesy of the JDC)
As the director of the JDC, or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in Poland, Karina Sokolowska has heard countless harrowing stories over the past year. But one sticks out in her memory.
It involved an elderly Ukrainian couple she met at the Poland-Ukraine border in late spring. The husband was in a wheelchair, and Sokolowska helped push him — back towards Ukraine. They had spent three months in a shelter in Poland but eventually “realized we cannot go looking for jobs, we cannot restart our lives. We are too old,” the woman said.
“If they are to die, they’d rather die back home,” Sokolowska said. “It’s a story of hopelessness. They are so vulnerable.”
Last year, about 8 million Ukrainian refugees made their way to Poland, the bordering country that accepted the most refugees. Early on in the conflict, Sokolowska contacted and visited Jewish communities throughout Poland, investigating the availability of places where the soon-to-be-homeless refugees could be housed. She also traveled to some of the border crossings where the Ukrainians entered, to arrange transportation to venues in Poland and to oversee the conditions in which the refugees would begin their new lives.
Later she would help with, among other things: arranging legal advice for the people who arrived with few identification documents; lining up medical care and drugs; finding them short- and long-term housing; connecting them to psychological counseling; providing kosher meals; and even caring for the refugees’ pets (“dogs and cats with no documents”).
According to JDC statistics, the organization “provided essential supplies and care” to 43,000 Jews in Ukraine and “aided 22,000+ people” there with “winter survival needs … more than double the amount served in previous years.” The welfare organization also claimed to provide “life-saving services” to more than 40,000 refugees in Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and other European locations. It also helped evacuate about 13,000 Jews from Ukraine. (Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen recently said 15,000 Ukrainian Jews in total have immigrated to Israel since the start of the war.)
Karina Sokolowska, JDC director for Poland and Scandinavia sits in her office down the hall from a hotline room, in early March 2022. (Toby Axelrod)
At the height of the refugee flood, Sokolowska said her monthly JDC budget ballooned to more than what she previously spent in an entire year. Her office went from having a few employees to over 20. The amount of sleep she got decreased in tandem; she started taking sleeping pills to get rest when she could.
“This is our new reality” in Poland, she says of the JDC work with Ukrainian refugees. “This is our life now.”
Sokolowska, the granddaughter of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors, became active in Jewish life during college, when a classmate heard her pronouncing some German words with a Yiddish accent and persuaded her to lead the Polish Union of Jewish Students. As JDC director for Scandinavian countries in addition to Poland, she typically organizes educational conferences and helps Jewish families learn about traditions they had not learned while growing up in the communist era.
Today, her sense of optimism has been ground down.
“Everything changed when war came to Ukraine — there is less hope,” Sokolowska said. “It’s a totally new everything. Every aspect of our life changed. Our hope for this to be over soon is going down, down, down. Nothing will change.”
‘It could [have been] me’
Tom and Darlynn Fellman volunteered in Krakow in October 2022. (Courtesy of Tom Fellman)
Sometime in the late 1890s, Harry Fellman, about 20 years old, left his home in Ukraine. According to family legend, he was a sharpshooter in the Ukrainian army and was about to be sent into active combat. Instead, he emigrated to the United States and settled in Omaha, Nebraska, where he became a peddler.
His grandson Tom Fellman — whose middle name is Harry — doesn’t know all the 120-year-old details, but he knows that he is grateful that Harry Fellman decided to leave Ukraine when he did.
“It could [have been] me, if my grandparents had not left when they did,” said Fellman, a successful real estate developer and philanthropist in Omaha.
In October, at 78 years old, Fellman made the reverse trip across the Atlantic to pitch in to the relief effort. He also wanted to pay what he sees as a debt to the memory of his late grandfather and to help the current generation of Ukrainian Jews.
He and his wife Darlynn served as volunteers for a week at the Krakow Jewish community center, joining hundreds (possibly thousands) of volunteers from overseas who have gone to Poland and the other nations in the region over the last year to participate in humanitarian programs on behalf of the millions of Ukrainian refugees. Fellman worked nine hours a day with a half-dozen fellow foreign volunteers in the basement of the community center, transferring the contents of “big, big” sacks of items like potatoes and sugar into small containers to be distributed to refugees in the building’s first-floor food pantry. His wife spent her time in an art therapy program that was set up for the refugee mothers and children to raise their spirits.
Fellman is “not particularly religious” but supports “anything Jewish.” In 1986, he accompanied a rescue mission plane of Soviet Jews headed to Israel. “It was the most rewarding experience of my life,” he recalled.
Fellman says he plans to return to Poland, in June, for the JCC’s annual fundraising bike ride from Auschwitz to Krakow.
What did his friends think of his septuagenarian volunteer stint? “They thought it was cool,” he said. “But none of them are going too.”
‘Everything was a risk’
Elizaveta Sherstuk runs a branch of Hesed, a network of welfare centers, in Sumy, Ukraine. (Courtesy of Sherstuk)
Sherstuk’s parents would have sent their daughter to a Jewish school in her early years if they had had the option. But Jewish education was not permitted In Sumy during the final years of communist rule in the Soviet republic. Sherstuk was exposed to Jewish life only at home.
Her parents infused her with a Jewish identity, she said, and her grandparents used to talk and sing songs in Yiddish. That inspired Sherstuk’s first career as a singer and a music teacher, during which she founded Aviv and took it on tour throughout the region singing traditional Jewish songs. Later, she became the director of Sumy’s branch of the JDC-funded Hesed network.
Sumy, an industrial city with a population of 300,000 before the war situated only 30 miles from the Russian border, was one of Russia’s first targets. In the days before the pending invasion, Sherstuk stockpiled food, which was certain to become scarce in case of war, and arranged bus transportation to safer parts of the country for hundreds of vulnerable civilians, mostly the elderly and disabled. The bus plan fell through for safety issues.
As the bombing started, it became dangerous for members of the local 1,000-member Jewish community, many of them elderly, to venture outside of their apartments. Sherstuk, working out of a bomb shelter, assisted by a Hesed network of volunteers, coordinated food and medicine deliveries.
The situation grew more dire, and she coordinated the Jewish community’s participation in a brief humanitarian corridor evacuation of vulnerable civilians that the Russians permitted. She communicated with Sumy residents mostly by smartphones provided by the JDC — the Russian attacks had cut the landlines — and accompanied the busloads of Sumy Jews to western Ukraine. Some of them eventually moved on to Israel, Germany, or other nearby countries, she said.
Sherstuk stayed in western Ukraine for a while (“The humanitarian corridors are only for one-way trips,” she noted), moving from place to place, keeping in touch with the Jews of Sumy and waiting for Ukraine’s army to make the trip back safe. But Sumy, like many Ukrainian cities, has come under frequent Russian rocket attack.
“Everything was a risk,” she said. “We were following whatever our hearts told us to do. We had to save people. I was the one who had to do it.”
Last May, Sherstuk was among 12 men and women (and the sole one from the Diaspora) who lit a torch at the start of Israel’s Independence Day in a government ceremony on Mount Herzl. During two weeks in Israel, she spent some time with members of her family, and held a series of meetings with JDC officials, government ministers and donors. “It was not a vacation,” she said.
After going back to Sumy, at the suggestions of her choral group members and fellow Sumy residents, she organized concerts in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian — some in person, some in a bomb shelter in the city’s central square, some online. She has now resumed her music classes, too, and it has all boosted morale. “I [teach] all the time,” she said.
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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.