In 2012, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “Turkey has also been allied with Iran, but it too is going to side with Germany in the future! Why? Because it disagrees with what Iran is doing in Syria! While Iran supports the Assad regime, Turkey supports the rebels.”

This was exactly what happened in December: Turkey broke its alliance with Iran over Syria—just after it allied with Germany.

On Dec. 8, 2024, rebels supported by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan overthrew Bashar Assad’s regime, which was allied with Iran.

“Idlib, Hama, Homs and, of course, the ultimate target is Damascus,” Erdoğan said on December 6. “Our hope is that this march in Syria proceeds without any accidents or troubles.”

He got his wish. The next day, Erdoğan stated, “[T]here is now a new reality in Syria, politically and diplomatically. And Syria belongs to Syrians with all its ethnic, sectarian and religious elements.”

In helping to overthrow Assad, Erdoğan was helping to break Syria’s alliance with Iran and Russia and opening up the possibility for a much different alignment of Middle East nations. This will involve Turkey’s closest trading partner, the European Union, specifically Germany.

Designs on Jerusalem

Erdoğan is willing to use brutal force to reshape the Middle East.

Mosab Hassan, a former Hamas supporter-turned-Israeli informant, warned on X, “Erdoğan is sharpening his knife to sacrifice Kurds, Jews and Arabs on his way to Jerusalem and Mecca. The new Jihadi-Turkish coalition is not good news” (Dec. 10, 2024).

Erdoğan has compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and called Hamas a liberation group. “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine,” he said on July 28, 2024, as Israel Defense Forces fought Hamas terrorists in Gaza. “Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them.”

“What initially seemed like an empty threat is now becoming a more plausible scenario following the rebels’ astonishing victory in Syria, where many factions supported by Ankara toppled the Assad regime in just 11 days,” the Jerusalem Post wrote (Dec. 11, 2024).

“Turkey’s growing influence in Syria aligns with Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman vision for the Middle East, as part of which Syria could transform into a Sunni Islamist stronghold under Ankara’s auspices,” the article continued. “Thus, it is plausible that Erdoğan either directly orders jihadist groups operating on the Israeli border to attack Israel or, at the very least, supports them in doing so. … Israel was wise to mobilize tanks and infantry across the border for the first time in 50 years.”

Time wrote in 2020 that Erdoğan’s role model is Selim i, the Ottoman sultan who ruled from 1512 to 1520 and extended the empire to Syria, Egypt, Palestine and what is now western Saudi Arabia.

Jerusalem has always been a focal point of this empire.

The Ottoman Empire ruled Jerusalem from 1516 to 1917. In 2020, Erdoğan hinted that Turkey has more than just a bygone historical connection to the city. “In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us. … The issue of Jerusalem is not an ordinary geopolitical problem for us. First of all, the current physical appearance of the Old City, which is the heart of Jerusalem, was built by Suleiman the Magnificent, with its walls, bazaar and many buildings. Our ancestors showed their respect for centuries by keeping this city in high esteem.”

He explained his alliance with Hamas terrorists this way: “We consider it an honor on behalf of our country and nation to express the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people on every platform, with whom we have lived for centuries. With this understanding, we will follow both the Palestinian cause, which is the bleeding wound of the global conscience, and the Jerusalem case to the end.”

Erdoğan has concrete goals for Syria and Jerusalem. While Turkey may be limited on its own to achieve many of its goals, the Bible reveals that it will commit a massive treachery.

“The sparse records of history, with other proofs, show that many of the descendants of Esau became known as Turks,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. “Therefore we must remember that prophecies pertaining to the latter days referring to Edom, or Esau, refer generally to the Turkish nation.”

Psalm 83 reveals that, together with others, Turkey (Edom), Syria (Hagarenes), the Philistines (Palestinian Arabs) and Germany (Assur) will form an alliance against the modern nations of Israel (primarily the United States, Britain and the Jewish state of Israel).

Germany is already in an alliance with Turkey; together they are prophesied to turn against Israel. Another specific prophecy is found in the minor prophets: “The book of Obadiah applies to the nation of Turkey,” Gerald Flurry writes in his booklet on Obadiah. “Edom has a history of betraying the nations of Jacob, or Israel. The historian Josephus records that 20,000 Edomites, or Idumeans, were accepted as defenders of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. Once inside, they betrayed the Jews by robbing and killing them—their own brothers!”

“For thy violence against thy brother Jacob … thou shalt be cut off forever. In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his [Jacob’s] forces, and foreigners entered into his [Jacob’s] gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them” (Obadiah 10-11).

Today, Turkey is among those that seek to conquer Jerusalem. It is willing again to brutally betray the Jews.

The Plain Truth explained, “Obadiah’s prophecy reveals that Edom (modern Turkey) will turn against his brother Jacob—against America and Britain, and also against the Jews of the modern-day State of Israel in Palestine. Turkey will actively cooperate with Jacob’s enemy! That enemy is prophesied as a final short-lived restoration of the ancient Roman Empire as 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe” (June-July 1980).

History is about to repeat itself on a much larger, much bloodier scale.