Amid Israel’s ongoing five-front war against Islamist terrorism, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” during its war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza during a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must also be stopped by the alliance of humanity,” Erdogan remarked during his speech addressing the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York. He went on to state, “I call out the United Nations Security Council, what are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza? To put a stop to this cruelty and this barbarianism?”

But Middle East experts say Erdogan’s statement is particularly hypocritical given Turkey’s history of genocide and the authoritarianism and ethnic cleansing which his own government has perpetrated. A.J. Nolte, an associate professor at Regent University who chairs the Government Graduate Program and serves as director of the International Development Program, joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Wednesday to discuss the Turkish strongman’s track record. 

“It’s incredibly hypocritical for Erdogan to be saying this,” he contended. “[There’s] the Armenian Genocide, which Turkey has still not recognized. [There’s] the attempt to ethnically cleanse, really, all of the Christian minorities from Turkey that’s been ongoing since [the] late stages of the Ottoman Empire up through today. … [I]n northeastern Syria, there was … [an] alliance of militias that the U.S. was supporting that had actually created a certain amount of stability and religious freedom, and Erdogan is invading that area and trying to drive out the Christians. So there’s been this very consistent pattern of cleansing those who are religiously and ethnically different, not to mention the failure to recognize the existence of the Kurds as a separate people. I would pose the question, ‘Are you better off as an Arab citizen of Israel or a Kurdish citizen of Turkey?’ And there’s no contest you’re better off as an Arab-Israeli. So this is rank hypocrisy on Erdogan’s part.”

Nolte went on to lay out the broader agenda of Erdogan.

“So there’s both a geopolitical agenda and then also Erdogan’s own sense of political legitimacy,” he explained. “So geopolitically, Erdogan sees Turkey as a rising power in the region, and he wants to assert himself as not a client of Iran, nor as part of … the of the ‘Alliance for Stability,’ which would be the United States, the Gulf countries, and Israel and their allies. But he sees Turkey as a third force. And so he’s trying to position himself as a Sunni alternative to the Iranian Islamists. … [D]omestically, Erdogan associates himself with … the Ottoman Empire that existed before secularism came into Turkey, and he associates the failure of the Ottoman Empire as sort of a conspiracy of interest that worked to bring it down. And he sees Zionism and the Jews as part of that. … [H]e’s trying to position himself as another defender of the Palestinian cause, another alternative to Iran, but also as a sort of restoration of the Ottoman legacy. And of course, in his mind, that involves also combatting the ‘scourge’ of Zionism.”

Nolte, who also serves as the director of Regent’s newly opened Institute for Israel Studies, further detailed the relationship between Turkey and Israel.

“Turkey’s relationship with Israel is very complicated,” he noted. “They had a reasonably warm relationship in the past, partially because they were both U.S. allies and partially because both of them saw some of the more Arab nationalist movements as threatening. That being said, the Turkish population … is very, very strongly anti-Semitic in a lot of dimensions. And so Erdogan is probably more reflective of the Turkish population’s views about Israel than some of the previous governments that had a more positive relationship with Israel.”

Nolte continued, “I think the Israelis are also trying to figure out how far this is going to go, because on the one hand, there have been a lot of trade ties [and] historic ties between Turkey and Israel, and there’s a hope to try to maintain that. But on the other hand, you have to look at what’s happening right in front of you, and this is certainly not a positive trajectory that Turkey’s on from Israel’s perspective. [The] situation [is] not trending in a positive direction if Erdogan and those who follow his policies are going to be in charge of Turkey.”

At the same time, Nolte observed, Erdogan is also trying to remain part of the NATO alliance for strategic reasons.

“Turkey views it as strategically in their interest to cooperate with NATO,” he pointed out. “They don’t necessarily want a more assertive Russian presence, although they will strategically compete with Russia [by] competing over resources they believe drives out the West — that’s kind of what they’re doing in Syria. And so Erdogan himself is playing a game with NATO where he wants to stay just enough on the positive side of the ledger that he won’t get kicked out and that he can use them as a shield against Russia, but also have the freedom to, as we would say, make mischief in the Middle East. And I think in the long run, that’s a very, very complex question for the [NATO] alliance.

Nolte concluded by insisting that it will be important to keep a close eye on Turkey going forward as the conflict in the Middle East continues to develop.

“Keep an eye on Erdogan’s own position within Turkey,” he urged. “Keep an eye on what the Turks are doing abroad and what alliances they make in the region. Keep an eye on — particularly if we start to see Iran weakened — does Turkey aggressively try to move into the gap and take some of those entities that have been proxies of Iran in the past and bring them into the Turkish orbit? I would say that’s pretty likely that if, in fact, Iran’s position starts to weaken, Turkey will try to move into the gap there. And then, of course, that question of how the U.S. should respond. Do we want to keep Turkey inside the tent, or are they so hostile now that actually they are moving outside of a country that we can really ally with?”