Anyone who thinks that Turkish-Israeli relations are just going through a major crisis is probably mistaken, since Erdogan is making sure that the gap between the two countries is widening every day.
The Turks' hatred of Israel is abysmal.
So after the Turkish "patronage" of South Africa to denounce Israel for war crimes against humanity in Gaza and genocide against the Palestinians,the "neighbors" went even further.
This time the "victim" of the Turks was an Israeli football player of the A national team of the Turkish football league, who "dared" to celebrate a goal he scored during a football match by showing a tattoo on his wrist that read about the 100th day of the capture of Israeli men, women, children, elderly and infants by the Hamas terrorist organization.
They detained and deported a football player for showing a tattoo of the October 7 Hamas massacre!
According to an Israeli media outlet, "if Sagiv Jehezkel - the Israeli footballer for the Antalyaspor team - had simply scored a goal on the 100th day of the capture of Israeli men, women, children, elderly and infants by Hamas and had not marked the occasion by showing what was written on his wrist, he would probably still be a popular figure in Turkey.
But instead of popularity, he paid the price of loyalty to his country with disapproval, cursing, harassment, detention, exclusion from the team, which is now seeking to legally cancel his contract and eventually deport him.
The question is if his stay was cancelled, his right to be in Turkey was challenged and every effort was made to humiliate him, why did the goal he scored count?
Surely if the man is not worthy,their legs are even less so, and the goal should be disallowed.
Hero honours in Israel for the footballer who returned to his homeland
Thankfully, Jehezkel came home with the Israelis waiting for him at Ben-Gurion Airport to give him a hero's welcome, lifting him up on their shoulders .
But they didn't stop there. The afternoon after returning home, Jehezkel, a former Hapoel Beersheba player, was invited to visit the Goldstar Beer VIP booth at Turner Stadium in Beersheba with wounded soldiers recovering from their injuries.
They came to watch the match between Hapoel Beersheba and Hapoel Petah Tikva. Jehezkel thought of the soldiers as heroes and they thought of him as a hero.
Good team players in football, basketball and other sports clubs often become the heroes of spectators and enjoy celebrity status almost everywhere.
Turkey's support for Hamas and its consequences
Ankara's harbouring of the terrorist Hamas, which Erdogan calls a "liberation organisation", over the past years, combined with the crimes committed by its murderers against innocent Israeli citizens, creates a united Israel-US front of very serious questioning of Turkey's role as an ally.
The "a la turka" interpretation of "international law" and international terrorism is nothing new, since on the one hand it provides shelter, refuge and a base for the Hamas terrorist organisation that recently committed atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians, while on the other hand it arbitrarily equates the Kurdish YPG in Northern Syria with the PKK terrorist organisation, hitting it militarily.
This development favours Greece, since it should be more than taken for granted that the Israeli lobby in the US after the latest developments will take the lead in not approving the sale to Turkey of 40 US F16 BLOCK-70 fighters and 79 upgrade kits for the same number of Turkish Air Force fighters.
Moreover, the gap in Turkey-Israel relations seems to be unbridgeable, a fact that, combined with the stable alliance-friendly relationship between Athens and Tel Aviv, gives wind to our country's plans for the Eastern Mediterranean, putting the Turks' "Blue Homeland" on the sidelines.
