U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack: There was a time period in the early 2000s, a honeymoon period between Israel and Türkiye. And fast forward, my belief and my hope is there will be again. What you’re hearing in rhetoric amongst the senior leaders of these countries is they have to, during a political campaign — which everybody is in, right? Prime Minister Netanyahu is moving towards October. He knows what his constituency wants. President Erdoğan is moving towards a decision as to when he’s going to call for a new election, or he’s in an election cycle. His constituency — a very solid, good, conservative, non-fundamentalist Islamic community — is always very upset about Gaza. Source: @MarioNawfal

U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack on the Middle East: All 57 prophets have been sent to this zip code. Not to the Caribbean, not to South America, not to North America, not to Australia, not to China — to this insolvable place. So if God can’t resolve it, if the prophets can’t resolve it, our idea of resolving it in the next year and a half is probably little. Source: @MarioNawfal

U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack: Türkiye is going into a new powerful mode, which makes everybody nervous, but it’s a great thing for Türkiye. You know, they, as a hub, as a non-Arab, really workable, kind, loving Islamic country, with eight countries around it and four seas, and Central Asia one way, Caspian the other, Mediterranean — you know, it’s threatening in its geographical presentation. So I’m hopeful the calmer heads will be there. The president’s doing a great job in just trying to keep temperatures down. Source: @MarioNawfal

U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack on the Israeli attack on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase: Let me give you the postulated theories. The first one is that the Israelis were baiting the Turks. If you remember, the Turks took out a Russian jet under the same kind of circumstances, right? Very dangerous game, having jets deployed on the border without notification, without some agreement. That was the serious and worrying part because I know that the Turks — their intelligence agency, their hierarchy, their foreign minister, the president, the head of intelligence — all are concentrating on restraint. It really is. That’s a fact. They’re not predatory. They’re not interested in attacking or even engaging in any kind of kinetic or adversarial relationship with Israel. It’s not good for the region. It’s not good for them. Everybody is looking for an off-ramp someplace. In Türkiye’s mind, the off-ramp, more than Iran, is a Palestinian solution. That’s really the problem in the Turkish population and the Islamic population. So one theory is they were just baiting Türkiye — that it’s a very aggressive, but maybe a well-received, pre-election concept. Source: @MarioNawfal