Turkish exports to Israel surge 542% in 2024, despite calls for arms embargo

Alameen Templeton
Turkish schizophrenia over Israel continues. It’s people oppose in their millions the genocide in Gaza, its president says Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal and Hamas is a liberation movement, and Ankara is leading a global alliance of 52 nations calling for an arms embargo on Tel Aviv.
But Türkiye exports to Israel in the first 10 months of this year surged 542% – and they were disguised as “exports to Palestine”, sent indirectly via Palestinian Authority customs, according to data from the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly in September.
Genocide is good for business, it seems. And it continues even as Ankara tries to lead a global initiative to cut off arms supplies to Israel.
Preaching is not practice
The Cradle reports Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan last week in Djibouti announced a group letter was sent to the UN and that it must be “repeated at every opportunity that selling arms to Israel means participating in its genocide”.
But Turkish exports ballooned despite a formal trade ban between Ankara and Tel Aviv, jumping from $102million to $661million in 2024. And the trade is increasing the longer it continues. August recently saw exports valued at $127million passing to Israel, compared to just $10million in August 2023.

Middle East Eye reports, despite the obvious and crying need to sanctions, and amid growing public fury at the genocidal state of Israel, Ankara officially suspended trade with Israel only in May (after seven months of genocide), but the government’s heart was clearly not fully committed to the process.
The Cradle reveals Türkiye continues to transit vital oil supplies from Azerbaijan to Israel, through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, before it is loaded onto tankers for delivery to Israel. The fuel “is crucial for the Israeli economy and for its air force and army to continue attacks on Gaza and Lebanon”, The Cradle says.
Voice of ‘the Turkish street’
That oil supply deal reveals clearly the schizophrenic depravity that haunts Türkiye, even as it tries to cut off Israel’s arms supplies.
“‘Erdogan, turn off the oil valves,’ said a banner carried by the activist group called ‘One Thousand Youth for Palestine’ at a protest outside the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in Istanbul in early September. ‘End your participation in Israel’s genocide.’
“Erdogan and Fidan previously collaborated with Israel and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Masoud Barzani, in northern Iraq in a scheme to deliver Kurdish crude to Israel. In June 2014, the three powers supported ISIS’ invasion of Mosul, which allowed the Kurdish Peshmerga to conquer oil-rich Kirkuk and begin oil exports to Israel via Turkiye.
“The support ISIS enjoyed from Ankara, Washington, Erbil, and Paris was crucial in helping the terror group commit genocide against the Yezidi religious minority in Iraq two months later,” The Cradle reports.
An outsider’s view seems to reveal an active sabotage may be under way in the heart of Ankara’s bureaucracy. Certainly, the bureaucrats have allowed loopholes in their laws to remain open and only now, after 13 months of genocide, are they reluctantly taking steps to shut down gaps.
Full-blooded commitment needed
Exporters are getting around the sanction laws by either exporting to “the Occupied Territories” or by using third countries, like Greece, to ship goods to Israel, Middle East Eye reports.
Goods officially sent to the Occupied Territories never reach their stated destination. Instead, they are offloaded at ports like Ashdod and diverted to Israeli buyers instead. MEE says sources have revealed that Israelis are even registering with the Palestinian Authority to continue their business.
Now, activists in major Turkish ports like Haydarpasa are staging ship raids in a bid to cut the illegal trade and journalists are turning to social media to expose the continuing business with the genocidal state.
New measures to cut the trade include a complicated process of vetting invoices by the Palestinian Authority which then confirms approvals with Türkiye’s Ministry of Trade. Turkish exporter associations then confirm and validate the trade.
Activists point out the PA is widely known as one of the most-corrupt, sycophantic institutions in Arabia and cannot be trusted to vet a cockroach, let alone approve trade invoices worth millions of dollars a month. The fact that Israelis are being allowed to register as “Palestinian” clearly illustrates the foolishness of involving the PA in anything, they say.
An agency dedicated to monitoring embargo violations is the only effective way to cut off the trade, but that would require a full-blooded commitment from Erdogan’s administration – something that is clearly lacking in Ankara’s arsenal, activists say.
But Mohammed al-Amour, the PA’s economy minister, tells MEE cutting off exports to the occupied territories would hurt Palestinians and put the supply back in the hands of Israelis. His government had pleaded successfully with Türkiye to exempt Palestine from its May embargo, he said.