Israel, once a province of the Ottoman Empire, would be “ours once again,” said Turkey’s Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci in a speech at an AK Party Corum Provincial Advisory Council Meeting on June 6.
 
“Just as in the past, those lands will be ours once again. God willing, they will come under our sovereignty and dominion once more. Because we have a global leader like Recep Tayyip Erdogan at our helm. A world leader,” he said.

Ciftci, who served as governor of the Turkish city of Corum and later the city of Erzurum, also expressed his desire to rule over Jerusalem. “When I was a governor, I had a supplication to the Almighty: ‘My Lord, one day grant me the governorship of Jerusalem,’” he said.

Turkish-Israel relations derailed following the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla of six ships, attempted to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. After a brief thawing period, which saw a visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Turkey, relations again collapsed in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent Gaza war.