PM tells Erdogan to ‘calm down’ with anti-Israel rhetoric, says he raised Egyptian military presence in Sinai with Cairo

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should “calm down” in the face of his increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Israel.

Asked during his Channel 14 interview if recent rhetoric coming out of Turkey concerns him, Netanyahu replies: “Of course it concerns me.”

Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials have ramped up threats against Jerusalem recently, with Turkey’s interior minister calling earlier this month for the country to “liberate” Jerusalem. Some Western and Israeli outlets reported that Erdogan called for God to destroy Israel during a prayer service marking the end of Ramadan in March 2025, saying: “May Allah, for the sake of his name… destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.”

Netanyahu charges that “what is happening in Turkey is a result of Iran’s decline in power. Iran is the extreme Shiite axis, while Turkey represents the axis of the Muslim Brotherhood — an equally extreme movement.”

“The things Erdogan says about wanting to destroy Israel and wanting to once again rule Jerusalem — I think he has forgotten that the 400 years of Ottoman rule have come to an end. Today, there is a strong state here called Israel. There is the Israel Defense Forces. There are the people of Israel. And there is a government of Israel. And it would be wise for him to calm down.”

“We will not allow anyone to threaten our existence. We will not allow anyone to threaten our security. And I think we have demonstrated what we are capable of,” he says.

The interviewer also asks Netanyahu about Israeli concerns over Egypt, apparently referring to Israeli media reports throughout the past year of growing concern in Jerusalem over an expanding military footprint in the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel is said to claim violates the demilitarization clauses of their 1979 peace treaty with Cairo.

“I have held discussions with the Egyptians, and I told them what I expect to be done. Part of it is already being carried out. These are matters that simply involve upholding the agreements between us,” he says, without elaborating.

“I think we need to safeguard our borders. But we must understand: as one power declines, another power rises. That is always the way things work. And the power that must continue rising — and to rise faster — is the State of Israel,” Netanyahu says.